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!t mtt ARYOF CONGRESS. J 





PULLMAN'S REPLY TO TALMAGE. 

> 

A REVIEW OF A SERMON BY THE REV. T. DE WITT 
TALMAGE, ENTITLED " THE BIBLE 
VS. UNIVERSALISM." 



BY 

REV. JAMES M. PULLMAN, 

PASTOR OF THE 

CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR 

(SIXTH UNIVERSAL 1ST SOCIETY) ? 
NEW YORK CITY. 



[thb library 

lOF CONGRESS 
WASHINGTON 



REPORTED BY EDW. B. DICKINSON. 



NEW YORK ; 
J. C. BALDWIN & CO., 35 & 37 YESEY STKEET. 
1875. 

T' 



SERMON. 



u The lord will not cast off forever." 

Old Testament. 

u GrOD WILL HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED, AND TO 
COME UNTO THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH." 

New Testament, 

u Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap. — Gtalatians vi v 7. 

Observing by a notice in the papers a week ago yes- 
terday, that Kev. Mr. Talmage, of the Brooklyn Taber- 
nacle, had announced as his subject for the Sunday morn- 
ing following, " Universalism versus the Bible," I took 
measures to have a verbatim report of that sermon made, 
and I propose, this morning, to review it. 

The question of the final destiny of mankind is one of 
the supremest importance. The human mind can con- 
sider no subject that at all approaches this in interest. 
What is to be the result of the creation and existence of 
the human race ? On this question turn our ideas of im- 
mortality, our views of the character of the Creator of 
the Universe, and our conception of our own duty. And 
as it is a subject of such transcendent concern, it ought 



4 



Introduction. 



to be approached in the most earnest, serious, candid, 
and reverent spirit. 

I had hoped that when the verbatim report of Mr. Tal- 
mage's sermon reached me, I should find in it an able, 
scholarly, comprehensive, earnest, courteous presenta- 
tion of whatever argument may be brought from the 
Scriptures against the doctrine of the ultimate extinction 
of sin, and the final complete victory of Grod over evil. 
In this expectation I have been entirely disappointed. I 
have before me, in this report, simply the old-time, sec- 
tarian harangue ; not addressed to the understanding of 
the hearer, but filled with ad captandmn appeals to pas- 
sion and to prejudice, in the preacher's w^ell-knowni and 
peculiar style. I have before me a sermon, which, from 
the adroit substitution of a false for a real issue at the 
beginning, to the repulsive exhortation with which it 
closes, deals with its professed subject in a manner and 
spirit sadly below the decencies of the occasion, and the 
momentous gravity of the matter. 

I can not, therefore, present to you this morning the 
subject of Universalism in the fashion which best accords 
with the grandeur of the theme. I have promised to re- 
view this sermon of Mr. Talmage, and I shall keep my 
word. Regretting, therefore, that he has not made more 
of his material, and regretting, also, that he has not di- 
rected his arguments against real Universalism, but has 
spent his strength in a battle with shadows, I will pro- 
ceed to discuss, not what he might better have said, but 
what he did say — unfortunately for his cause. And it 
may be permissible to remark, in preface, that if, in fol- 
lowing Mr. Talmage through, I should unfortunately catch, 
in some instances, something of the spirit and tone of the 



Introduction. 



5 



discourse which I review, my desire to meet the preacher 
on his own ground must be my justification. 

I entertain entire respect for all who honestly and in- 
telligently differ from me in religious belief, and I have 
due and even tender regard for the feelings of those who, 
through misapprehension or otherwise, look upon Univer- 
salism as a dangerous heresy. I shall not willingly say 
anything here this morning to wound the sensibilities of 
such. The freedom of belief which I claim for myself, I 
freely accord to all men. For those who disagree be- 
cause of false impressions, and for those who disagree be- 
cause in their deliberate and candid judgment the weight 
of argument is against Universalism, I entertain a frank 
and cordial esteem. But I can not regard the preacher 
of this sermon as the representative of either of these 
classes. He is sui generis — of his own kind ; and as such 
I must deal with him, although I hope in a kindly spirit. 
My creed binds me to exercise charity toward all men, 
and certainly here is an occasion for it. I have also a 
most profound and entire conviction that the preacher of 
this sermon will ultimately be saved, however unpromis- 
ing the matter may look at present ; but as to his work, 
as represented in this discourse, I gladly hold with the 
Apostle Paul, u If any man's work shall be burned he 
shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as 
by fire." 

Mr. Talmage's sermon sets out with this statement : 

"It is not more certain that you are here this morn- 
ing, not more certain that there is a window there, not 
more certain that this over me is a ceiling, not more cer- 
tain that that is a carpet, than it is certain that Grod has 
declared destruction to the finally impenitent" 



6 Introduction. 
• 

Long may the preacher of the Brooklyn Tabernacle 
have a ceiling over his head, a carpet beneath his feet, a 
window through which God's light may shine into his 
soul ; and long may he be spared to fling such harmless 
declarations against the doctrine of God's impartial grace ! 
For I ask you to observe, that by the use of that phrase, 
" the finally impenitent" Mr. Talmage has begged the 
whole question in his very first sentence. u The finally 
impenitent." There is just the point of the debate. Uni- 
versalism asserts that there will be no u finally impenitent. " 
Every sinful soul will be brought to repentance. God 
has declared destruction to the sinful disposition, but sal- 
vation to the sinning soul. The soul is saved by being 
made righteous ; the sinful propensity is burned out and 
destroyed. To speak of an u impenitent " soul as being 
u saved " is a contradiction in terms — and Universalism 
has never been guilty of such confusion. Universalism 
maintains the final salvation of the impenitent — those 
w T ho are impenitent now, or who may remain impenitent 
through unknown periods of time ; but it denies the pos- 
sibility of the final, that is, the unending, eternal, impen- 
itence of any human soul. It opposes that u orthodoxy " 
which teaches that God will allow the sin to finally 
destroy the sinner ; and holds that no soul can forever 
resist the infinite persuasion of Almighty God. 

Mr. Talmage goes on to say that this declaration ought 
to excite fear, and that Universalism comes out and tries 
to quell this fear. He says that u Universalism wants to 
sew two pillows under his arm sleeves, and two under 
those of each of his hearers. 99 But he declares that Uni- 
versalism shall not do it. He says : 

" God helping me, I shall this morning put before my 



Introduction. 



T 



soul and yours the absorbing facts, and shall try to snatch 
every pillow of false peace from under the arms of my 
auditors, and show them what the dangers are, that they 
may one and all escape. " 

Then he goes on in these words : 

u Suppose there was some real danger ahead, and a 
man comes into your house and says, ' There is no peril, 
there is no need of your preparing for it ; there is none.' 
But another neighbor comes in and says, 6 There is a 
peril, but I know how you can escape it, and I have 
come to deliver you.' Which is the best friend and best 
neighbor ? Why, the latter, of course.'' 

Now, if a man comes into my house to warn me of a 
danger which actually exists, he is my friend. But if a 
man comes to my house in the night, when I am asleep, 
and awakens me with a false statement of a danger which 
does not exist — if he comes and tells me that my house 
is on fire when it is not ; and conceals from me that at 
the bank, where I have my funds, the thieves are at work, 
that there is the immediate danger — if he comes to warn 
me of a false danger, to excite me with a false alarm, 
so that I shall overlook and not prepare for the real peril, 
— then he is not my friend, but is a dangerous, mislead- 
ing enemy, deluding me under the guise of friendship. 

The danger that Universalism perceives awaiting every 
sinful man, is the danger of living a life of sin. Not alone 
because it brings pain, but because sin is in itself intrin- 
sically evil, and ever to be feared and shunned. A dan- 
gerous disease attacks a man's eyes— but it is not the pain 
alone that constitutes the danger of that disease. It is 
the peril of losing his eyesight, of going all his days in 
blindness — that is the calamity to be feared. If the sur- 
geon simply gives alleviation for the pain, and allows the 



8 



Introduction. 



disease to run on, he is not a friend but an enemy — the 
more dangerous as he is believesd and trusted. 
Mr. Talmage goes on to say : 

" There are two branches of Universalism, one made 
up of the Restorationists, who admit a limited punish- 
ment after death. # # But the vast majority of 
Universalists I have met with in the world, believe that 
there is no future punishment at all, and that whatever 
may have been our character in this world, the moment 
we step across the line into the future world we are 
completely happy. People need not tell me that this is 
not Universalism — I take it not from books, I take it 
from my own observation, and from frequent and con- 
stant conversation with men who have adopted such 
rules.' 7 

Generally, the best way to find out what a man be- 
lieves is to ask him. And when he tells you, it is not 
always safe to say " Pshaw ! that is not what you be- 
lieve: you think it is, you think you believe this, but 
you really believe that" I desire to say, in this connec- 
tion, simply this, that the distinction made by this 
preacher between Restorationists and Universalists does 
not exist. And I desire to add, that in my opinion, this 
preacher knows it. Universalists are Restorationists, 
and Restorationists are Universalists. There is no 
difference ; there is no split or schism in the church on 
this question. 

Mr. Talmage says he u didn't take his understanding 
of Universalism from books." He should have taken it 
from books. Where else ought he to get it except from 
authorized publications. Observe the disingenuousness 
of his statement : u The majority of Universalists I 
have met with in this world." Now, the force of that 



Introduction. 



9 



testimony depends upon the number of Universalists he 
has met with. If I should assert, with equal emphasis, 
that the majority of Hottentots I had met with believed 
in spooks, the universal prevalence of spook-theology 
among that race of beings must not be hastily inferred 
from my statement. It may transpire that I have never 
met any Hottentots except at Barnum's. Mr. Talmage's 
•• vast majority of Universalists " has been made to or- 
der for this occasion, or else his credulity has been sadly 
imposed upon. ' 

Now, if he really wishes to know what the doctrine of 
Universalism is, I can refer him to the Universalist creed. 
Since it is a creed so short that all can remember it, I 
will read it. It is called the Winchester Confession. 
It was adopted in the year 1803 — before Mr. Talmage 
was born, I think. It was the belief of the Universal- 
ist Church long before it was put in this authoritative, 
tangible form, and it has been the belief of the Univer- 
salist Church ever since. 

" Art. I. We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the 
Old and Xew Testaments contain a revelation of the 
character of God, and of the duty, interest, and final 
destination of mankind, 

" Art. II. We believe that there is one God, whose 
nature is love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one 
Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore the whole 
family of mankind to holiness and happiness. 

" Art. III. We believe that holiness and true happi- 
ness are inseparably connected, and that believers ought 
to be careful to maintain order and practice good works ; 
for those things are good and profitable unto men." 

That is the doctrine of Universalism. If Mr. Talmage 
wants to know what Universalism is, I refer him to this. 



10 



Introduction. 



I refer him also to the literature of the church, ample in 
volume and succinct in statement. I refer him to Origen 
and Gregory, in the early church, and to the Ancient 
and Modern Histories of Universalism. No man need be 
m darkness as to what the doctrine of Universalism 
really is. 

I ask you to observe, that in this most unworthy at- 
tempt to cast a slur upon Universalism by calling it what 
it is not, Mr. Talmage has simply set up a man of straw. 
He is welcome to the honors of any victory he may gain 
by such devices. Universalism is the belief, that 
" Whatsoever a man sowefh that shall h e reap ; " that 
66 Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go un- 
punished; " that " He that doeth wrong shall receive for 
the wrong which he hath done, and there is no respect of 
persons" Universalists believe this ; and so believing, 
believe also that God will finally restore the whole 
family of mankind to righteousness and obedience. 
The odium which Mr. Talmage attempts to cast upon 
Universalism by disingenuous misrepresentations, recoils 
upon himself. For what is effectual death-bed repentance 
but a remission of the sins of an entire life in a single 
instant of time — a translating of the hardened and un- 
punished soul out of the wickedness it has taught itself 
to love, immediately into the presence of the saints and 
the glory of God? When he preaches death-bed repent- 
ance, when he preaches complete instantaneous conver- 
sion, when he announces entire cessation of punishment 
at death and forever after, he preaches a doctrine, which, 
turn it how you will, denies 'all these solemn texts, 
breaks the relation of sowing and reaping, proclaims a 
God who lets the sinner go unwhipt of the Divine justice. 



A Curious Court-Scene. 



11 



I might end this controversy here, for Mr. Tahnage's 
sermon, from this place onward, is not directed against 
Universalisni, but against a kind of Antinomianism, 
which, I think, must have been evolved from the dim re- 
cesses of the preacher's inner consciousness. Certainly 
there is nothing like it in the heaven above, or in the 
earth beneath. But while his argument is thus awry 
and of no earthly consequence so far as the common 
mind can apprehend it, he has nevertheless used certain 
illustrations, and adduced certain scripture passages, in 
such relation and application that a review of them may 
be profitable and expedient. For the sake of the Scrip- 
ture, for the sake of your better understanding of it, 
and for the sake of Grod's divine truth, I shall follow 
him through. 

He proceeds to say : 

" I solemnly empanel all this audience as a jury. I 
shall this morning show you that Universalisni is un- 
scriptural, unreasonable, destructive of good morals, 
withering of all earnestness of soul-saving, and the 
means of eternal catastrophe to a great many." 

Now, let us see what a kind of court we have in the 
Brooklyn Tabernacle. Here is the audience as jury ; 
here, in the person of the preacher, is the advocate, the 
lawyer ; here is the Bible, the witness — that is all ! 
Does that constitute a court of justice ? Is there not 
something lacking in that court ? What is lacking % 
Why, the defendant is lacking. If the defendant had 
been present in person, or by counsel, when that jury 
was empaneled, he would very likely have challenged 
some to the favor, and some for the principal cause. 
And not only is the defendant absent but the judge also. 



12 



Calling the Witnesses. 



And so it is evident — what would be evident without 
this illustration — that we have here, not a court of jus- 
tice, not even a court of equity , but an inquisition. 
The defendant will not be heard. His case has been 
prejudged; and this shallow pretence of the forms of jus- 
tice is merely put on to blind the people to the unright- 
eousness of the predetermined verdict. 

He summons the witnesses to the court. And the first 
witness whom he calls up is Dives, the lost. He asks : 

" Dives, is there a perdition ? " — I have warned you 
that the question between the Universalists and this 
preacher is not whether there is a perdition, but whether 
there is an endless perdition. 

"Dives, is there a perdition ? " asks Mr. Talmage. 

"Yes," answers Dives, "I have just come 
from it ; it is torment. I can not get anything to 
cool my tongue. I want a cup of water, and 
can't get it. Do send word to my five brethren, 
that they go not into that suffering." 

" Now," says Mr. Talmage, " Universalism tries to 
impeach this witness by saying 'No: it is an allegory. 
Lazarus, the saved, is the Gentile converted ; and Dives, 
who lilted up his eyes in hell, being in torment, is the 
Jew whose spiritual privileges were cut off in this world. ? 
Preposterous ! 73 says Mr. Talmage ; " If the Lord Jesus 
Christ was going to make an allegory, he would not 
make one so imbecile as that." 

Now, I don't enter into the question whether this is a 
proper allegory or not. I shall assume the Lord Jesus 
to be a better judge of what an allegory is than Mr. 
Talmage. And as the question at issue is not what kind 
of a hell Dives was in, but whether he is to remain 
there eternally, I shall enter into no controversy as to the 



The Scripture Argument 



13 



meaning of the parable, only referring Mr. Talmage to a 
sagacious saving of the wise Solomon : u The legs of the 
lame are not equal ; so is a parable in the mouth of fools. " 

I regret that J can't summon Dives from hell to be 
cross-examined. My influence with the authorities 
there does not seem to be as potent as that of Mr. 
Talmage. They have doubts and suspicions, I pre- 
sume, about the return of one of their victims if 
he should fall into the hands of a Universalist. They 
have no such suspicions of the Tabernacle preacher. 
They feel sure that he will send Dives back. It 
must be, by the way, a refreshing thing for those 
who, according to Mr. Talmage's doctrine, are now 
confined in everlasting fire, to have him occasionally 
preach a sermon which necessitates calling witnesses 
from that sultry region. It would seem a very desirable 
temporary relief — although, judging from the tone of his 
sermon, I am afraid that Dives found the temperature of 
the Tabernacle uncomfortably warm even for him ; and 
he probably returned to his place of punishment consid- 
erably reconciled to his fate. 

I can't ask Dives about this matter, and put the ques- 
tion whether the perdition he was in was an endless per- 
dition ; whether there is any possible way of escape out 
of it. But I can summon three witnesses after Mr. Tal- 
mage's fashion. I can ask David, I can ask Jonah, and 
I can ask John about it. 

I ask David : 

" Is there any escape from hell ? w David answers : 
" Great is thy mercy towards me ; thou hast 
delivered my soul from the lowest hell." 



u 



The Scripture Argument. 



I ask Jonah as to the perdition he was in : 

" Out of the belly of hell cried I ; * # the 
earth and her bars was about me for ever." 
u How long did this 1 forever ? last ? " I ask. Jonah 
answers : " Three days and three nights." 

Mr. Tahnage would doubtless desire to infer the hope- 
less condition of Dives from the statement, " Between 
you and us there is a great gulf fixed ; " and to accom- 
plish this it is only necessary for him to borrow the 
slight and insignificant adverb, " endlessly," and prefix 
it to u fixed; "—a begging of the whole question, to 
which he seems well accustomed. Grant him this slight 
boon — which it is cruel to deny to his necessity — and 
then, if the story be not a parable, he will leave Dives 
triumphantly u fixed " in hell forever. But what for ? 
What was his offense ? Why, he had been a rich man, 
clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously 
every day. This is all that is alleged against him ; but, 
on Mr. Talmage's principle of interpretation, this is 
enough ; the Divine Government imposes the penalty of 
everlasting torment in hell for such an offense. Lazarus, 
on the other hand, had earned the endless bliss of heaven 
by being a beggar, full of sores. No other virtue is as- 
cribed to him. Such being Mr. Talmage's view of the 
principles of the Divine Government, he should have 
withheld his fling at the u unsavory, unwashed wretches " 
of this life. They are on the right track ; they are 
qualifying themselves for Paradise ! 

Enough of this. The precise interpretation of this 
parable — for it is a parable — does not touch the issue 
now raised. Mr. Talmage should have shown that the 
suffering of Dives, whatever or wherever it was, was 



The Scripture Argument. 



15 



endless, unbeneficial, hopeless ; to be terminated neither 
by salvation nor annihilation — to endure as long as God 
exists. Failing utterly to show this, he may remand his 
witness, while we listen to the averment of John the 
Revelator, that " death and hell delivered up the dead 
that were in them." 

Mr. Talmage says that he will not stop with this witness, 
but will bring documentary evidence in the parable of the 
Tares. He says, the righteous shine forth in their Father's 
Kingdom — here again there is no question between us. 

He goes on to ask, u Do you know how the Universal- 
ists have squeezed and distorted that passage ? They 
have done so until they have made the furnace to be 
Jerusalem, and those who are to shine forth forever in 
their Father's Kingdom are the Jews who didn't happen 
to get killed in the war at the time the city was taken 
— an interpretation that would throw any audience into 
a convulsion of laughter, if the awfulness of the theme 
did not forbid merriment." 

I give this as a specimen of candid Mr. Talmage's ju- 
dicious criticism of Universalist interpretation. u They 
have squeezed and distorted this passage, till they have 
made the furnace to be Jerusalem/ 7 sneers Mr. Talmage. 
But why not sneer at Isaiah, who uses precisely the same 
expression: " The Lord's fire is in Zion, and his furnace 
in Jerusalem" And although I never heard any Uni- 
versalist give to this parable the exact interpretation 
which Mr. Talmage alleges, yet I hear Christ himself 
warning his followers to "flee to the mountains/ 7 when 
the judgment described should come, not in the u end of 
the world/ 7 as Mr. Talmage knows very well, but in " the 
end of this age ; 77 and the evangelist who records the 
language has not noted that any " convulsions of laugh- 



16 



Tlie Scripture Argument. 



ter " followed the warning to escape, not from a far dis- 
tant, but from an immediately impending judgment, 
which was to take place before the disciples should have 
u gone over the cities of Israel." 

The u Jews who didn't happen to get killed in the war 
at the time the city was taken/' as Mr. Talmage felici- 
tously puts it, were the believing Christians, who held 
fast their profession in spite of persecution and false 
Christs, faithfully watched for the warning signs de- 
scribed by their Master, noted them in time, escaped the 
Jewish overthrow, and lived to assist in the establish- 
ment of their Father's Kingdom — the Christian dispen- 
sation. They " didn't happen to get killed," because 
they u happened" not only to believe in Christ, but to 
obey him implicitly ; and I commend their faith and 
works to Mr. Talmage as a better security, both for time 
and eternity, than the mechanical, perfunctory, official 
faith, sans the u filthy rags" of righteousness, which con- 
stitutes in this sermon his final appeal. 

The parable of the Tares unquestionably refers to the 
little germ of the Christian Church, then growing up in 
the midst of the decaying Jewish Church, subject to all 
the perils of persecutions without and of hypocrisy and 
faithlessness within incident to such a situation, and soon 
to be fiercely tested by the disorders and disasters 
attending the total overthrow of the Jewish Church and 
Polity — of which the central catastrophe was the destruc- 
tion of the temple and city of Jerusalem. This catastro- 
phe, which marked the tremendous transition from the 
Mosaic to the Christian faith, the most important and 
far-reaching event in the history of the world, was of 
importance enough, even in the minds of those who 



The Scripture Argument. 



17 



dimly perceived its immense significance, to warrant and 
justify the strong language, the striking and vivid fig- 
ures in which they describe it. The expression u fur- 
nace of fire " is tame and inadequate, compared with the 
bold and startling figures used by Christ himself to 
describe that great transition : 

" The sun shall be darkened ; * # the moon shall not 
give her light ; # * the stars shall fall from Heaven ; 
* * the powers of the Heavens shall be shaken." These 
figures are taken from Old Testament writers, who use 
them to describe national catastrophes. But he goes on 
— " Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in the 
Heavens, # * and they shall see the Son of man 
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great 
glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound 
of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect 
from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the 
other." 

Thus did Christ himself describe the overthrow of the 
Mosaic and the establishment of the Christian dispensa- 
tion ! and lest some subsequent Talmage should misun- 
derstand him, and fall into u convulsions of laughter" 
over the majestic event, he specifies, in unmistakable 
terms, the time : u Now, learn a parable of the fig-tree. 
When his branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves, 
ye know that summer is nigh. So, likewise ye, when 
ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even 
at the doors. Verily, I say unto you, this generation 
shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled" But Mr. 
Talmage's case, in this parable, turns upon the meaning 
of the " furnace of fire." It was incumbent on him, in 

order to justify his appeal to this u documentary evi- 
2 



18 



Th Scriptun Argunu nt 



denee,'' to show the endlessness of that fire, that it 
burned throughout all eternity, without either purifying 
or consuming its victims. This, of course, he has not 
done, and can not do. 

The tire that burned up Mr, Talmage's first Taber- 
nacle, he found to be literally unquenchable. The 
Brooklyn fire department could not put it out. yet. on 
the very spot where that unquenchable tire did its 
work, stands Mr. Talmage's new and greatly improved 
building, embracing in its construction all that was val- 
uable in the old structure, together with many new and 
better ideas. Why will not Mr, Talmage himself 
" learn a parable . 7 " 

The expression, "furnace of fire." is used often in the 
Bible, and as often quoted by Universalists as by others. 
It is at impressive and striking way of describing the 
Divine punishments. It is otten called a u refining fire." 
a "purifying fire. ;? Good men get into it — as witness 
Shadrachj Meshach. and Abednego — and stand it brave- 
ly. Bad men go into it. and feel the power of God's 
retribution, even to their bones and marrow. All men's 
works are tested by it : false work is burned up. and the 
false worker suffers loss, — " but he himself shall be 
saved, yet so as by fire." 

Dismissing here Mr. Talmage's " documentary evi- 
dence/' we turn again to his witnesses. And in adopt- 
ing Mr. Talmage's method of bringing forward the testi- 
mony of the Scriptures, I desire to explain that I do it 
only to show you that he can be met and decisively an- 
swered on his own ground — not that I consider his 
method desirable. The old monks believed that the 
hedgehogs stole their grapes by rolling through the vines 



The Scripture Argument. 



19 



and carrying off the fruit that stuck to their quills. 
Hedgehog controversialists roll through the Bible in the 
same way. and come out with such texts sticking to 
them as their temper and idiosyncrasies attract. But a 
handful of texts clutched at random from the Bible may 
as little represent the meaning of their authors, as a cart- 
load of bricks would represent the plan of the architect 
of the Brooklyn tabernacle. 

But for the effect Mr. Talmage desired to produce 
upon a popular audience, it was necessary that he should 
choose texts rather for their sound than their signifi- 
cance. A certain proportion of smoke and brimstone 
was necessary; therefore he must resort to that book of 
the Bible whose florid figures are drawn from the smok- 
ing asphaltum pits of Palestine. As witness his interro- 
gation of John — not John the Evangelist, but John the 
Revelator. 

"John, is there a perdition P — And John answers : 

" They shall drink of the wine of the wrath of 
God, which is poured out without mixture into 
the cup of his indignation. * * He shall be tor- 
mented with fire and brimstone in the presence of 
the angels, and of the Lamb. # # And the 
smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and 
ever. 

Here Mr. Talmage has the terrifying figures that he 
wants ; figures unmistakably drawn from the fiery over- 
throw of the cities of the plain, the smoke of whose de- 
struction continued, it is affirmed, to ascend for ages, 
even down to the time of the apostles. But unfortunate- 
ly for his purpose, both the original figure and the pres- 
ent metaphor unquestionably refer to punishments suf- 



20 



The Scripture Argument. 



fered in time and on the earth, and to national rather 
than individual calamities. 
I ask John : 

u Who shall suffer this punishment ?" — and he answers ; 

u They who worship the beast and his image. }f 
I ask, u What beast — and he answers : 

" The beast that rose up out of the sea, bearing 
seven heads and ten horns. # * Let him that 
hath understanding count the number of the beast; 
for it is the number of a man, and his number is 
six hundred threescore and six." 
Now I hope that Mr. Talmage understands this, and 
can tell us the precise danger we are in. " The beast 
with the seven heads and ten horns/' sounds a little like 
a description of the old Tabernacle as it appeared from 
the street. But that has already suffered that purgation 
of fire which its ugliness deserved ; and on the ruins has 
arisen a fairer structure : just as on its ruins of many an 
unsightly and unworthy life, a better life, shall, by God's 
discipline and grace, be builded. 

I will ask John a decisive question : 
" Where was this wine of the wrath of God to be 
poured out V J — and he answers : 

" I heard a great voice * * saying, # * Pour 
out the vials of wrath of God upon the earth" 
I will ask one more question ; 

" What in your vision did you behold as the final re- 
salt of the purpose of God and the work of Christ?" — 
and he answers ; 

u And every creature which is in heaven, and 
on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are 
in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying; 



The Scripture Argument. 



21 



Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto 
Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the 
Lamb forever and ever." 

Next Mr. Talmage summons Paul ; 

44 Paul is there any perdition V 9 — and Paul answers ; 

u In flaming fire taking vengeance on them 
that know not God. 
And again ; 

"Who shall be punished with everlasting de- 
struction from the presence of the Lord, and the 
glory of His power. " 
Mr. Talmage has here again been true to his idea of 
selecting passages which will terrify in the sound, rather 
than in the significance. He has got his "flaming fire," 
and his "everlasting destruction." But he has overshot 
the mark once more. Everlasting destruction is one 
thing, and endless unde struct ion in interminable torments 
is another, and an entirely different thing. Mr. Talmage 
is not set for the defense of the doctrine of the annihila- 
tion of the wicked, but of their endless duration in end- 
less torture. And if he seeks to evade this difficulty by 
claiming that this text means " banishment " from the 
presence of the Lord and the glory of His power, he 
squarely contradicts the testimony of David, who says 
that such banishment is impossible : — - 

" If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there ; 
if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there ; 
if I take the wings of the morning, and fly to the 
uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy 
hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me." 
Mr. Talmage has chosen the only passage in all PauPs 



22 



The Scripture Argument. 



writings where the phrase " everlasting destruction " is 
used. And Mr. Talraage probably knows, or if he does 
not, a brief study of the writings of the most learned 
men of his own school of theology will teach him, that 
the word everlasting can not be relied on to prove the 
doctrine of endless punishment, because it derives its 
force from the object to which it is applied. Applied to 
God, it means unbeginning as well as unending duration ; 
applied to hills and mountains, as it is in the Bible, it 
means indefinite duration ; applied, as it is, to statutes, 
covenants, and priesthoods, long since abolished by God 
Himself, it means strictly limited duration ; applied to 
punishment, it means whatever duration such punish- 
ment may be shown, by other and independent testimony, 
to have. 

To make out his case against Universalism, it was in- 
cumbent on Mr. Talmage to prove by Paul that the 
wicked, at death, are plunged into hopeless, unbeneficial, 
unending torments, enduring as long as God Himself 
exists; but he has only introduced the phrase "ever- 
lasting destruction/' — which does not mean that, say 
that, or anything at all like that. 

I will now ask Paul what the punishment of sin is ? — 
and he answers : 

" The wages of sin is death." 

I ask him to define the death he means;— and he 
answers : 

"To be carnally minded is death ; but to be 
spiritually minded is life and peace." 
I ask him if the retributions of the Almighty are in- 
exorable and unescapable ; — and he answers: 

"Indignation and wrath; tribulation and an- 



The Scripture Argument. 



23 



guish upon every soul of man that doeth evil." — 
And again : 

" God will render to every man according to 
his deeds. " — And again : 

u He that doeth wrong shall receive for the 
wrong that he bath done ; and there is no respect 
of persons." — And again : 

u Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." 

I ask him why man was thus subjected to sin and its 
certain punishment f — and he answers ; 

" The creature was made subject to vanity, 
not of his own will, but by reason of Him who 
hath subjected the same in hope ; because the 
creature itself also shall be delivered from the 
bondage of corruption into the glorious lioerty of 
the children of Grod." 
I ask him what provision has been made for this final 
deliverance ? — and he answers : 

6 6 Where sin abounded, grace did much more 
abound ; that as sin hath reigned unto death, 
even so might grace reign unto eternal life by 
Jesus Christ our Lord." 
I ask him if this Divine provision is ample for the 
whole human race ? — and he answers ; 

"As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall 
all be made alive." — Again : 

" Christ Jesus # # gave himself a ransom 
for all, to be testified in due time." 
I ask : u A ransom for all, even the worst sinners I " 
— and he answers with emphasis : 

u This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all 



24 



The Scripture Argument. 



acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world 
to save sinners, of whom I am chief.'' — And 
again : 

" God commendeth His love toward us, in that, 
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." 
J ask: •'It is true, then, that death will turn God's 
love for the sinner to hatred, and cut off all hope for- 
ever ? w — and he answers : 

"I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, 
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor 
things present, nor things to come, nor height, 
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God, which is in 
Christ Jesus, our Lord." 
One more question : " What is the will of God in re- 
gard to the final salvation of all men ? w — and he answers : 
" God * * will have all men to be saved, 
and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." 

Mr. Talmage summons Isaiah. "Isaiah, is there any 
perdition ? " — and Isaiah answers : 

u Their worm dieth nor. and their fire is not 
quenched." 

It is difficult to see that Mr. Talmage expected to 
prove by this witness. What the words quoted do prove 
may be best seen by reading the whole passage, which 
shows that the judgment was temporal destruction, not 
endless suffering : " And they shall go forth and look 
upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed 
against me : for their worm shall not die. neither shall 
their fire be quenched : and they shall be an abhorring 
to all flesh." 

I will ask Isaiah one question : u What shall be the 



The Scripture Argument, 



25 



final result of the divine government ? " — and he an- 
swers : 

u The Lord hath made bare His holy arm in 
the eves of all the nations ; and all the ends of 
the earth shall see the salvation of our God." 
Being in the neighborhood, I will ask a question of 
Jererniah, a witness whom it did not suit Mr. Tannage's 
purpose to call, although he has spoken very explicitly 
on this point. I ask: "Are the Divine punishments 
endless ? " — and Jeremiah answers : 

u The Lord will not cast off forever ; but 
though He cause grief, yet will He have compas- 
sion according to the multitude of His mercies. " 

Mr. Talmage summons David, and asks : " David is 
there a perdition ? " — and David answers : 

" The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all 
the nations that forget God." 
Mr. Talmage certainly knows two things about this 
•quotation. First, that it does not touch the real issue 
between us, which is, not whether the wicked are turned 
into hell, but whether they are punished with immitig- 
able, interminable tortures, continued as long as God 
exists; and secondly, that the word "hell," as used by 
David and the other Old Testament writers, does not in 
any respect describe the kind of place which he is seek- 
to impress upon the minds of his hearers. 

But as 1 have promised to follow him on his own 
method^ I will question his witness. 

I will ask David if the Divine punishments are end- 
less ? — and he answers : 

" The Lord will not always chide, neither will 
He keep His anger forever." 



26 



The Scripture Argument. 



u What is the method of the Divine punishment ?" 

u If his children forsake my law and walk not 
in my judgments ; if they break my statutes and 
keep not my commandments, then will I visit 
their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity 
with stripes ; nevertheless my loving-kindness 
will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my 
faithfulness to fail." 

" The law of the Lord is perfect, converting 
[not destroying] the soul." 
"What, then, shall oe the final result of the Divine 
Government ? " — and he answers : 

u All the ends of the world shall remember and 
turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the 
nations shall worship before Thee." 

Then, finally, Mr. Talmage summons the Saviour. 
He asks: u O Christ! Is there a perdition?" — and 
Jesus answers : 

" At the end of the world the angels shall come 
forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, 
and shall cast them into the furnace of fire ; there 
shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." 
Here again Mr. Talmage is presuming upon the igno- 
rance or the prepossessions of his hearers to give this quo- 
tation the effect he desires. For it is impossible that he. 
should not know that the " end of the world " here 
spoken of is a very different thing from the u end of 
the world " toward which he is directing his hearers' 
thoughts. 

For this separation and judgment was to take place 
at the beginning, not at the end of Christ's reign ; at 
the end, not of the material universe, kosmos, but at the 



The Scripture Argument. 



27 



end of that age, Aeon, L e., the Mosaic age, which was 
terminated by the establishment of Christianity. 

Neither is the punishment here specified at all to Mr. 
Talmage's purpose. u Many shall come" says Jesus 
in another place, u from the east and west, and shall sit 
down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the king- 
dom of heaven ; but the children of the kingdom shall be 
cast into outer darkness ; there shall be weeping and 
gnashing of teeth." Mr. Talmage could by no means 
admit that the children of his future and final kingdom 
of heaven were to be cast into outer darkness to weep 
and gnash their teeth ; and is therefore obliged to make 
this passage refer to temporal and immediately impend- 
ing judgments. Whatever is intended, therefore, by the 
" furnace of fire/ ' the u wailing and gnashing of teeth/' it 
must have primary reference to earthly and temporal 
punishments. And aside from this, let the punishment 
be what and where it may, here or hereafter, the real 
question still recurs : Is it hopeless, endless, un beneficial 
torture, continued for torture's sake, as long as God 
exists ? Universalism holds that whatever Grod's punish- 
ments are, and wherever they are inflicted, and however 
bitter and long-continued they may be, their final 
result will be to subdue utterly the stubborn will, 
satisfy completely the demands of justice, produce a 
perfect and lasting repentance, a final and complete 
conformity to the will of Grod. Xo soul can forever re- 
sist them. 

But Mr. Talmage proposes to introduce testimony 
more to the point. He selects these passages : 

u Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting 
fire," — and 



■ 



28 



The Scripture Argument. 



" These shall go away into everlasting punish- 
ment, but the righteous into life eternal." 

" Now." says Mr. Talmage, u many Universalists say 
you are to go back to the Greek, and find out that that 
word * everlasting 1 don't mean what you have been repre- 
senting it to mean." " So," he continues, " there are 
persons who could not parse a Greek sentence to save 
themselves from being hanged, who don't know the dif- 
ference between Kappa and Epsilon, who talk about 
Greek." 

Here, at last, Mr. Talmage unconsciously discloses his 
secret. When you hear a man disparage learning you 
may be sure that he has something to fear from it. The 
same motive and spirit that here seeks to throw con- 
tempt upon the application of learning to scripture inter- 
pretation is even now clamoring all over our country 
against Public Schools and other means of enlighten- 
ment. 

Knowing that a very slight knowledge of the language 
in which the New Testament was written would be fatal 
to his theory, Mr. Talmage seeks to ridicule such knowl- 
edge. In speaking thus contemptuously of learning, he 
displays the true priestly sagacity. It is the immemo- 
rial policy of priestcraft to blind that it may control. 
Ignorance is the soil in which alone superstition can be 
cultivated. It was knowledge that killed the Giant 
Despair, whose ghost Mr. Talmage is trying to coax out 
of its grave. Unless he can inspire his hearers with a 
contempt for learning, his cause is lost. If he can not 
keep them in ignorance of the real significance of the 
passages he has quoted, he can not keep them in bond- 
age to the fear of endless torments. Therefore he 
seeks refuge in a weak ridicule, and declines the contest 



The Scripture Argument. 



29 



on the grounds of learning, saying " the English is good 
enough for you, and good enough for me." 

I am persuaded that Mr. Tahnage thoroughly under- 
stands the fact that the word u everlasting w which he 
here brings forward, did not and does not, on the lips of 
Christ, doom any soul to hopeless torment and endless 
ruin. 

For it is not Universalists alone who have discovered 
that fact. Some of the most learned men of Mr. Tal- 
mage's own school of theology long ago found it out and 
announced it. The highest authority on the meaning of 
the phrase " everlasting punishment/' outside of the 
New Testament, is the great Origen, who was born only 
185 years after Christ, and who was the most learned 
and eminent of the early Fathers of the Church. Using 
the very language in which the New Testament wa& 
written, he must be held to be better authority on the 
question than the preacher of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, 
even although the latter u knows Kappa from Epsilon," 
and to save himself from being hanged, might be able to 
" parse a Greek sentence." Origen was a Universalist, 
believing that all punishment is disciplinary, medicinal, 
and corrective, and that every soul shall finally be puri- 
fied and saved. Yet he uses the very phrase u everlast- 
ing punishment " to describe penalties which he taught 
would certainly come to an end, thus showing conclu- 
sively that the phrase had not in that age the meaning 
of endlessness which has been imported or injected into 
it by theologians of more recent times, to suit the exi- 
gencies of the non-scriptural theory of immortal torments* 
In other words, Origen, using the same language in 
which the words of Jesus are recorded, employs the 



30 The Scripture Argument. 

phrases "everlasting fire " and u everlasting punish- 
ment, ,? to describe disciplinary and corrective punish- 
ments which, so far from being endless, should result in 
the complete purification of the sinful soul. 

But Mr. Talmage finds it easier to ridicule the results 
of investigation than to confute them. His acquaintance 
with the plans and purposes of God is that of an intimate 
and familiar confidant, and so he takes a short and easy 
road ou: of difficulties. This is his original and conclu- 
sive disposition of the matter : 

"I reply," says Mr. Talmage, u that God, if He found 
there was so vast a difference between the original and 
our translation, would long before this have given it to 
us in English, so that we w^ho don't know Greek could 
understand it." " You can't make me believe," shouts 
the Tabernacle preacher, " that God would keep a truth 
in which our eternal destiny is involved covered up in a 
heap of Greek roots ! " 

Mr. Tannage's friends, already considerably exercised 
with anxiety about him, should redouble their vigilance 
after this declaration. The entire New Testament being 
written in Greek, the story of the birth, miracles, cruci- 
fixion, and resurrection of Christ, together with the entire 
body of his teaching, and that of the Apostles, being 
written in Greek — in short, the whole Christian reve- 
lation being involved in the structure and usage of the 
Greek language, or, as Mr. Talmage elegantly puts it, 
" covered up in a heap of Greek roots/' it is evident 
that "you can't make him believe" that that revelation 
contains anything of grave importance. Nothing less 
than a new, direct, and express revelation, written in the 
language now used by the average Brooklyn church- 
goer, will command Mr. Talmage's belief. To " save 



The Scripture Argument. 



31 



himself from being hanged 97 he could parse a Greek 
sentence, but to save him from being damned you must 
6i give it to him in English ! 77 

Mr. Talmage might, however, have put the substance 
of his proposition in such form as to have commanded 
universal assent. If # instead of assuming that the doc- 
trine of immortal pain is true, and therefore it must be 
revealed, must be found in the Scriptures whether it is 
there or not, and in spite of all uncertainties and obscu- 
rities of language, if he had said, " If the doctrine of 
unending torment is true, we shall find it clearly and 
unmistakably revealed in Scripture, for it is inconsistent 
with the character of a just God to profess to make a 
final, complete revelation to His creatures of their duty 
and destiny, and leave the most momentous fact of all in 
any doubt or obscurity ; " if this had been his proposi- 
tion it would have commanded the assent of all rational 
minds. For such minds have the feeling so well ex- 
pressed by Athanase Coquerel, the distinguished Pro- 
testant clergy m an of Paris, who says : u Who will 
believe that the eternity of punishment, a doctrine of 
such grave and terrible importance, can depend, in any 
sense, upon trifles of criticism, upon variations of trans- 
lation t The first legitimate prejudice against such a 
dogma is created by the necessity of giving it such a 
support; and I can not but think that, if it was taught 
in the Gospel, it would be done with a clearness so ter- 
rible that we should all tremble at it, but not dispute- 
it." 

Now the doctrine of unending torment is not only not 
clearly and unmistakably taught in the Gospel, but its 
direct contrary is in many passages distinctly affirmed. 



32 The Scripture Argument. 

And not only so, but if it is inconsistent with the char- 
acter of God to keep a revelation, in which o;ir eternal 
destiny is involved u covered up in a heap of Greek 
roots," what is to be said about the countless millions 
to whom God never made this revelation in the Greek 
or any other language, who lived and died with no 
warning whatever of their awful peril ? or of the millions 
now living who are beyond the utmost reach of this 
Christian revelation, and are marching down unwarned 
to their awful doom ? 

If the human race do now, or ever have stood in peril 
of hopeless, unbeneficial, endless torture at the hands of 
their Creator, they ought, at the very least, to have been 
clearly and distinctly warned. A just God, without 
either love, pity, or mercy, could have done no less than 
to warn His creatures of their peril. Has He done so ? 
Why, even granting all Mr. Talmage claims about this 
revelation, God has not warned in any manner one-half, 
not one-fourth, not one-tenth of His creatures. The 
revelation of the Old Testament confined to a favored 
nation ; the revelation of the New Testament reaching 
less than one-third of the people now living on this 
earth ! Now add the fact that no reputable scholar will 
risk his reputation in the assertion that the Old Testa- 
ment teaches the doctrine of endless torment, in other 
words, that it is practically conceded that God left even 
His favored people without warning for four thousand 
years ; and add the other fact that the New Testament 
utterances on this point are such that the belief in the 
final salvation of all existed unchallenged among the 
purest and best in the earlier and purer ages of the 
Christian Church, and exists and is prevailing now 



The Scripture Argument. 



33 



wherever enlightened minds and Christian hearts are the 
interpreters of the Gospel — put these facts together and 
the inference is irresistible : God has not revealed the 
doctrine of endless torments, simply because it is not 
true ; He has not warned His creatures of hopeless, 
irremediable ruin at the end of this short life, because 
they stand in no such peril at His hands. God has not 
conferred the unsought gift of life upon myriads of His 
creatures only to make that gift an infinite curse to 
them. He " will have ail men to be saved, and to come 
unto the knowledge of the truth. " 

But it suits Mr. Talmage's purpose in this sermon to 
ignore utterly the results both of critical and rational 
inquiry into the meaning of our Saviour's language. 

In a controversy with Universalists he " don't know 
Greek/' and speaks of such knowledge contemptuously : 
but in a controversy with Roman Catholics he could, to 
use his own elegant and felicitous expression, " put the 
screws 77 of exegesis on those passages upon which the 
Eomish Church relies to support the doctrines of Tran- 
substantiation, Plenary Indulgence, and the rest. 

In such a controversy he becomes "a Greek among 
Greeks," but when Universalism is the object of his 
attack, he assumes the attitude of a simple-minded ex- 
pounder of the letter of the English version of the Scrip- 
tures, saying "the English is good enough for me, and 
good enough for you." 

In this assumed character, he brings forward the well- 
known passage, u These shall go away into everlasting 
punishment, but the righteous into life eternal ; 7} and, 
declining all investigation as to Christ's actual meaning, 
disposes of the whole matter in this summary fashion : 
3 



34 



The Scripture Argument. 



" If you dwindle up the sufferings of the lost, you must 
dwindle up the rejoicings of the saved ! If, in one ease, 
the sufferings are not to be eternal, in the other the re- 
joicings are not to be eternal ! " 

Now, we have seen the Tabernacle preacher put to 
some desperate shifts already in the course of his sermon, 
but to none, I think, quite so desperate as this. For 
this Christian preacher here brings forward the old pa- 
gan doctrine of Dualism to the support of his assumed 
Christian doctrine of the endlessness of punishment. In 
those early and misty days, when this world was con- 
ceived to be the theatre (I beg Mr. Tannage's pardon, 
he does not like theatres) — the arena, I will say, of the 
administration of two equally potent Rulers — one evil, the 
other good — between whom there was waged perpetual 
warfare without substantial advantage to either, — in those 
days, the ideas of a necessary relation and interde- 
pendence between Good and Evil, and an endless conflict 
prevailed among men. But when Monotheism arose, 
and the grand conception of One Supreme Being, God 
over all, dawned upon the world, then these dualistic 
notions faded away into the twilight from which Mr. 
Talmage in desperation invokes their aid. And when 
the Christian Revelation threw its broad light upon this 
One Supreme Being, and showed Him not only as God 
of all but as Father of all, willing not only but abundantly 
able to u subdue all things unto Himself/ 7 to triumph 
over all rebellion, not by eternalizing Evil, but by over- 
coming it ; able not only but directly purposing to ran- 
som all souls from darkness and wickedness, and as an 
earnest of that purpose sending His Son to " seek and to 
save that which was lost,' 7 — then men's souls began to 



The Scripture Argument. 



35 



throw off the incubus of darkness and terror that had so 
long oppressed them, and they began to hope for and 
to expect the final perfect triumph of Good over Evil. 
J mong the more eminent of the Christian Fathers who 
so received the Christian Revelation were Clement; 
Origen, Marcellus of Ancyra, Titus of Bostra, Gre- 
gory of Nyssa, Didymcjs the blind, Diodorus of Tarsus, 
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Fabius Marius Victorinus, 
and many others less known to modern times. These 
were all Universalists, believing that the Divine punish- 
ments, wherever inflicted or however long continued, 
were disciplinary, medicinal, corrective, and would re- 
sult in the final purification of all souls. Yet they used 
this phrase u everlasting punishment/' as descriptive of 
severe and long- continued correction; and it apparently 
never occurred to them that in teaching, suffering, toil- 
ing for the final abolition of all evil they were working 
also for the final abolition of all good. They thought 
that the Kingdom of Light should more and more pre 
vail till the kingdom of darkness should be utterh 
abolished and terminated. 

They had not heard Mr. Talmage declare that the 
existence of evil is necessary to the existence of good, 
that " if you dwindle up the sufferings of the lost, you 
must dwindle up the rejoicings of the saved ! If the 
suffering is not to be eternal the rejoicing is not to be 
eternal ! n 

The plain English of this declaration (that English 
which Mr. Talmage declares is " good enough for him ") 
is simply this, that nobody can be endlessly happy un- 
less somebody is endlessly miserable, that the perpet- 
uation of good depends upon the perpetuation of evil, 



36 



The Scripture Argument. 



that when the lires of hell go out the glories of 
Heaven will fade into- darkness. It follows, by conse- 
quence, that good has not an independent but only a 
relative existence. If there were no evil there could be 
no good ; no hell, no heaven ; no devil, no God ; no 
Universalisin, no full-orbed Talmage ! In eternal dark- 
ness is our only expectation of light, in eternal conflict 
our only hope of peace, in endless suffering our only 
prospect of enduring joy ! 

1 commend to the Pagan philosopher of the Brooklyn 
Tabernacle these words of the Christian Apostle : 

u Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered 
up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall 
have put down all rule, and all authority and power. 
For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under 
his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is 
death. * * And when all things shall be subdued 
unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto 
Him that put all things under Him, that Grod may be all 
in all." 

Once more : Had Mr. Talmage been disposed to ac- 
quaint his hearers with the real force and significance of 
our Saviour's words, u these shall go away into everlast- 
ing punishment/' he would have said, — for I can not 
credit him with the ignorance he feigns — he would have 
said : u This phrase can not be relied upon to establish 
the endlessness of the Divine punishments, because the 
word i everlasting ? derives its force from its object, and is 
commonly applied in Scripture to objects having a defi- 
nite and limited duration. Moreover, the word ' punish- 
ment' has as its primary meaning pruning or trimming, 
as of the limbs of a tree, signifying in fact, disciplinary 



The Scripture Argument. 37 



or corrective suffering, instead of vindictive torture. 
Besides, the phrase 6 everlasting punishment ? is not, in 
this sentence, balanced against immortal life or endless 
existence, but against 6 eternal life/ which is a very 
different thing, signifying not primarily the duration of 
existence, but the quality of life. Both the righteous 
and the wicked have immortality, but the righteous 
only have 6 eternal life.'" 

Thus far Mr. Talmage, as an honest and competent 
interpreter of the Christian Scriptures, should have in- 
structed his hearers. But since he has chosen to compel 
this passage to the support of the horrible dogma of end- 
less, infinite, vindictive torments, straining the words 
beyond the intent of their author, beyond the usage of 
the New Testament writers and the Christian Fathers, 
and apparently relying upon the commended ignorance 
or the prepossessions of his hearers to give the effect he 
desires, I will refer the whole matter to the highest 
and final authority, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. 

I will ask him, " What is eternal life ? " — and he 
answers : 

"This is life eternal, that they might know 
Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
Thou hast sent." 
"Then," I continue, "since eternal life is life spirit- 
ual, the blessed knowlege of God and Christ, does it 
belong alone to the future and immortal state, or may it 
be had here and now ? " — he answers : 

" Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that hear- 
eth my word and belie veth on Him that sent me, 
hath everlasting life, and shall not come into con- 
demnation, but is passed from death unto life." 



38 



The Scripture Argument. 



I ask him, u Lord, what is the condemnation ? " — he 
answers : 

" This is the condemnation, that light is come 
into the world, and men loved darkness rather 
than light, because their deeds were evil. For 
every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither 
cometh to the light lest his deeds should be 
reproved." 

I ask, " Lord, have you come to deliver men from this 
condemnation ? " — lie answers : 

u God sent not his Son into the world to con- 
demn the world, but that the world through him 
might be saved." — Again : 

"I come not to call the righteous, but sinners 
to repentance." — Again : 

" The Son of man is come to seek and to save 
that which was lost." 
I ask, " How many, Lord, shall be saved ?" — he 
answers : 

" All that the Father hath given me shall come 
unto me." 

I ask, "How many, Lord, hath the Father given 
you ! " — he answers : 

ki All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth." 

" The Father loveth the Son, and hath given 
all things into his hands." 
"Then, blessed Saviour, will you indeed save all?" 
— and Christ answers : 

"I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw 
all men unto me." 
And Paul speaks : 



The Scripture Argument. 



39 



u He gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testi- 
fied in due time." 
And John confirms : 

"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not 
for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. w 
And Paul adds : 

"As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall 
all be made alive. " 
And the Lord rejoins : 

"There shall be one Fold and one Shepherd. " 
Then One speaks whose voice it did not suit Mr. Tal- 
mage to hear. The Almighty proclaims : 

"I am the Lord^ and there is none else; I 
form the light and create darkness ; I make 
peace and create evil ; I, the Lord, do all these 
things." 

u I will not contend forever, neither will I be 
always wroth; for the spirit should fail before 
me, and the souls which I have made. 

"My counsel shall stand and I will do all my 
pleasure. 

u Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of 
the earth ; for I am God, and there is none else. 
I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of 
my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return. 
Tha;t unto me every knee shall bow, r every tongue 
shall swear, surely shall say, in the Lord have I 
righteousnesss and strength.' 7 
Christian brethren, the Bible, read not to give isolated 
passages in support of an arbitrary dogma, but studied 
to ascertain the real meaning and intent of its authors; 
gives no support to the doctrine of the endlessness of the 



40 



The Scripture Argument. 



Divine punishments, the final triumph of evil, the infinite 
ruin of the race. But it does teach in every book, on 
almost every page, in every variety of expression, by 
its threatenings no less than by its promises, the doctrine 
that God is the Absolute Monarch of His universe, who 
can and will overcome all evil, whether of imperfection 
or of sinfulness, who will, either by the process of faith 
and obedience, or by the process of overwhelming cor- 
rective retribution, subdue utterly all rebellious wills, 
bring every refractory soul to repentance, and educate 
every one of His creatures to final, willing, absolute, 
blessed conformity to His perfect law of righteousness. 
And this is Universalism. 

Mr. Talmage, in closing what he calls his Scripture 
argument, makes this appeal : 

u Oh, my friends, will you throw over your Bible or 
Universalism ? I press you up to that choice to-day, 
and you must make it." 

I reply : 

" Throw over your Universalism, and you do throw 
over your Bible." 

The real question is, Will you interpret your Bible 
aright ? 

Universalism does not make men abandon their Bibles ; 
but the belief that the Bible teaches the horrid dogma of 
infinite rain a ! nd despair has caused thousands to throw 
over their Bibles, to give up their faith in Grod, to re- 
nounce their belief in religion, to desert its ordinances, 
discard its teachings and avoid its teachers. 

I warn you, therefore, that by the lurid light of the 
dogma of endless torments, you can not interpret your 
Bible truly ; that with the smoke of an endless hell roll- 



Is Universalis™ Reasonable ? 



41 



ing between you and your Creator you can not know 
Him truly, for you can not see Him as He is ! 

Mr. Talmage concludes this division of his subject thus : 

"Now I don't at this moment say that this is the 
word of God. I don't say it is an inspired book. I 
don't even say it is a virtuous book, but I do say that 
if the Bible is right, then Universalism is wrong, awfully 
wrong, everlastingly wrong." 

What Mr. Talmage postpones saying, I will say now. 
I will say that this is the word of God. I will say that 
it is an inspired book. I do say that it is a virtuous 
book, the basis of the highest morality known to mankind. 
I will not say " if the Bible is right," I concede no ifs. 
I say the Bible is right, and being right, the dogma of 
endless punishment is radically, hopelessly, curelessly 
wrong, a horrible imputation upon the Divine nature, an 
unauthorized and unwarrantable limitation of the power, 
justice, wisdom, and goodness of God, a derogation of 
the saving power of Christ and the potency of the Holy 
Spirit ! 

Through many ages this false, misleading, pernicious 
dogma has been an engine of spiritual despotism. Now 
its power is broken. It is a palsied and withering arm 
of priestcraft. Let not Mr. Talmage hope to restore it 
while the people hold the Bible, and the word of God is free. 

II. — Is Universalism Beasonable ? 

Mr. Talmage next says, "I proceed still further to 
show you that Universalism is unreasonable." 

This he proposes to demonstrate u geometrically " 
after the following fashion : 

" There are two roads for the soul's travel : one is 
faith in Christ, with all that it involves ; the other 



42 



The Rational Argument. 



starts with the rejection of Christ, and keeps on in sin 
and rebellion against God all the way through. 99 " There 
are two roads leading out of New York ; one runs to 
Boston, the other to San Francisco." " Does it make 
no difference ? 99 asks Mr. Talmage, u which one of these 
roads a man takes V 9 u These roads being in opposite 
directions, they must come out at opposite termini. No- 
thing but moral insanity can make you think any differ- 
ently." 

And this Mr. Talmage calls a " geometrical de- 
monstration " of the unreasonableness of Universalism. 
He could scarcely have pitched upon an illustration more 
unfortunate for his purposes. If, indeed, the earth were 
a flat surface, such as, at the time when Mr. Tannage's 
mediaeval theological system was framed, it was conceived 
to be, then his two roads running in opposite directions 
would have different termini; but the "geometry," or 
rather the geodesy, of this earth happens to be such that 
two travelers, setting out in exactly opposite directions, 
and continuing their journey, must inevitably meet again. 
Undoubtedly the best way to get from New York to Bos- 
ton is to take the direct Boston road, bat that a man can 
go from New York to Boston, by way of San Francisco 
and the antipodes, is not to be doubted, unless, indeed, 
on arriving at San Francisco, which, in Mr. Talmage' s 
figure seems to stand for u hell," he should be seized with 
"moral insanity" and decline to pursue the journey ! 

Universalism holds that 66 hell 99 is preventive against 
such moral insanity ! Salvation is final, complete, glad 
conformity to God's will, righteousness; and can be 
pursued by the road of grace, faith leading to obedience, 
or by the road of retribution, punishment leading to 



The 'Rational Argument, 



43 



obedience ; and man can choose which of these roads he 
will take, but as to the final result he has no choice, and 
there is no alternative possibility. He must obey. God 
will not compromise with disobedience for pain. From 
the eternal demand for righteousness, man can take no 
final refuge in hell nor in that u moral insanity," mis- 
named moral freedom, which, in theological usage, means 
that God can make His grace irresistible to some, but 
not to all. Man is no more free to continue in endless 
rebellion than he is free to annihilate himself. He can 
not surrender his immortality. He must live, and he 
must conform at last, fully, willingly, gladly, to the 
Divine will, rising as fast as he does so conform from 
mere natural immortality into that eternal life, which is 
the knowledge of God, and the harmony of the human 
with the Divine will, through Jesus Christ. This, Mr. 
Talmage, is the Divine u geometry ?; of eternity, repre- 
sented not by a line, but by a circle, and demonstrating, 
not the eternal discordance of God's universe, but a final 
perfect harmony and completeness. 

Given, an Almighty Being, having the power and the 
disposition to perfect the humanity which He has created, 
and having ail eternity to work in, and the Universalist 
expectation of His complete success is the only ground 
tenable by reason. 

Misled by his figure of the two roads, Mr. Talmage 
asks, u Does it make no difference which road a man 
takes ? " 

Universalism answers, it makes a most momentous 
difference ; the man who willfully rejects the offer of faith 
to lead him to obedience and life, subjects himself to the 
long and costly cure of punishment. As much better as 



44 



The Rational Argument. 



joy is than sorrow, hope than despair, love than hate, 
right than wrong, good than evil, so much better is it 
for man to follow the right road. 

It is Mr. Talmage who minimizes the difference be- 
tween the two roads. He teaches the doctrine that a 
man may travel the wrong road for fifty, sixty, three- 
score years, and then, by a miracle of conversion, be 
snatched back to the very goal toward which the man 
who has chosen the right road is faithfully directing his 
obedient steps ! 

It is this doctrine that confounds 4 4 the difference w be- 
tween the two roads, that sends the murderer to heaven 
and his victim to hell, and makes the eternal destiny of 
a man to depend, not upon his character, but upon the 
often involuntary circumstances attendant upon his exit 
from this world. Not " did he live right V but 44 did he 
die right f " is the question that decides his endless des- 
tiny ! Instantly killed — hell ! mortally wounded, but 
with breath to spare for a muttered repentance — heaven 

It is this dogma that confuses moral distinctions, con- 
founds our ideas of the Divine justice, divorces piety 
from integrity, religion from righteousness, and causes 
thousands to postpone their spiritual education from 
youth to age, under that delusion of 44 moral insanity n 
which teaches that a sensual life, followed by an effect- 
ual repentance, is u making, the best of both worlds." 

It is curious to observe, in the illustrations chosen by 
Mr. Talmage, the intellectual limitations imposed upon 
him by his bondage to an outgrown and outworn theo- 
logical system. Both his 44 geometry ?? and his geog- 
raphy bear even date with his theology. Augustine 
may be called the father of the theology which Mr. 



The Hational Argument. 



45 



Talmage preaches, yet, as has been well observed, 
" ships are daily chartered to those antipodes which 
Augustine declared to be unscriptural, and Lactantius 
impossible, and Boniface of Metz beyond the latitude of 
salvation." The theological system of these men is con- 
formed to, and in many features wholly depends upon, 
their views of the physical universe. Those views have 
been utterly discredited by advancing knowledge. The 
i6 times of the Almighty " are longer than they realized, 
and the scene of the Divine agency is grander, larger, 
older, and more teeming with life than they thought. Yet 
to-day the Brooklyn Tabernacle resounds, not with their 
moral ideas, but with their theological systems, and the 
preacher, seeking an illustration of things eternal, limits 
his view of the physical world to that portion of it that 
lies between Boston and San Francisco, serenely oblivi- 
ous of the fact that the force of his illustration wholly 
depends upon there being no space beyond those 4 1 ter- 
mini," and limiting, by the same mental law, his view 
of the moral progress possible to man to that narrow 
portion of an endless duration that lies between the 
cradle and the grave ! 

But theologians of Mr. Talmage's class learn nothing 
and forget nothing. With every advance of investiga- 
tion the universe broadens and deepens before our won- 
dering eyes. The standard by which we measure space 
and time enlarges day by day. Our minds are broad- 
ened by these helps to a larger and deeper realization of 
what an immortal existence, an infinite duration, must 
be ; yet Mr. Talmage still fulminates dogmas that in- 
volve in their very structure conceptions of the phe- 
nomenal universe which were long ago discredited and 



46 



The Rational Argument. 



abandoned — still insists, with a tlieologic rage inversely 
proportioned to the tenuity of his evidence, that man's 
destiny for weal or woe is determinately and unalter- 
ably fixed in its briefest opening stage. This short life 
once past, no matter how short, no matter under what 
disabling circumstances spent, then there opens a change- 
less eternity ! The crudest, weakest, most ignorant, 
most passionate, shortest portion of man's career, decides 
all the rest. All the work of eternity done in the first 
hour ! Then ceases the love of God, the work of Christ, 
the saving power of the Holy Spirit for ever and ever ! 
Then begins an endless carnival of wrath and hate, 
Almighty Power upholding the soul in immortal being to 
inflict on it immortal agony, with no purpose either to 
cleanse or to destroy, but only to increasingly and end- 
lessly torment. 

This is to ascribe to the Master-spirit of the universe 
a dark, infinite, motiveless malignity. Only " moral in- 
sanitv v can accept such a theory ; and, indeed, it is 
generally found necessary to produce a temporary moral 
insanity by the prolonged excitements and terrors of a 
•• revival," before the doctrine can be lodged in any 
human mind. 

Thus Mr. Talmage's reference to Justice is to a cari- 
cature of justice ; his characterization of a God makes 
us wonder what terms are left in which to describe a 
devil ; and in his appeal to Eeason, as against Univer- 
salism, reason is utterly confounded. 

,fc You ask me to believe that Universalism, which 
predicts salvation for all mankind, is reasonable, and I 
refuse to do it," shouts Mr. Talmage. 

In reply, I say, " You ask me to believe that when 



The Rational Argument. 



47 



the sinner dies, God seizes on him, and makes the evil 
that is in him immortal, perpetuates and upholds* it by 
His almighty power forever — and I refuse to believe 
it." 

Mr. Talmage holds that God will eternalize evil — Uni- 
versalisni holds that He will overcome and eradicate it 
utterly from His universe. Which is the more reason- 
able f 

Mr. Talmage goes on to say — and here I ask you to 
observe closely — Mr. Talmage goes on to say, " You try 
to make me believe that in that world where all the 
desperadoes and abandoned have gone, the soul is going 
to get better. Will Robespierre and James Fisk be 
there ? Oh, what a delicious, savory place heaven would 
be if the wretches who went down to their graves un- 
washed got there ! " 

Is this the voice of a Christian minister, speaking of 
his fellow-creatures and fellow- sinners, for whom Jesus 
Christ died ? Is this the voice of a disciple of Him who 
came "to seek and to save the lost ;" who came "not 
to condemn the world, but that the world through Him 
might be saved;" who " tasted death for every man ;" 
who took his way in the streets of Jerusalem, past the 
houses of the self-righteous scribes and Pharisees, down 
to the abodes of the weak, the abandoned, the degraded, 
the sinful, the tempted, the " unwashed wretches " of 
this Christian, minister's contemptuous vocabulary ? Is 
this man the mouth-piece of that God who taught us to 
say " our Father ? " who so "loved the world that He 
gave His only -begotten Son 2" Is this the spirit of a 
disciple of that Lord, who spoke the parable of the lost 
sheep, and of the prodigal son; who declared that 



48 



The Rational Argument. 



u there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth 
more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need 
no repentance who said, " Other sheep have I which 
are not of this fold ; them also must I bring ; and there 
shall be one fold, and one shepherd" ? 

It is time that this clattering, shallow tongue should be 
stopped. 

It is to men of such spirit and temper that 
Jesus said, u The publicans and harlots go into the king- 
dom of heaven before you." It is to this auctioneer of 
reserved seats in the kingdom of God, who guarantees 
their first-class location, and their entire isolation from 
the unsavory and unwashed — it is to such stock-jobbers 
of heavenly places, that the parable was spoken, u Two 
men went up into the temple to pray : the one a Phari- 
see, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and 
prayed thus with himself, God, I thank Thee that I am 
not as other men are — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or 
even as this publican ; I fast twice in the week ; I give 
tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing 
afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto 
heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be mer- 
ciful to me a sinner." And Christ says that he went 
down justified rather than the other. I tell you it is 
against a spirit such as this, that thus sneers, from the 
Christian pulpit, at God's creatures, or any portion of 
them, as unsavory, unwashed wretches ; it is against a 
spirit such as this that Christ leveled his rebuke : 
" Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye 
shut up the kingdom of heaven against men ; for ye 
neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that 
are entering to go in." 



The Hatlonal Argument. 



49 



It is a wonder to me that the Tabernacle preacher, so 
easily disgusted at things unsavory, does not at once 
move out of Brooklyn. 

Yet it seems to me that if Almighty God could endure 
the lives of Robespierre and James Fisk so long, it ought 
to be somehow possible for Mr. Talmage to endure the 
thought of them a little longer, or at all events to with- 
hold his sneer till he is sure of seeing an answering ex- 
pression on the Saviour' s face ! And I believe that there 
is a speedier prospect for the repentance of a frank vil- 
lain like Fisk, who knew he was a sinner, than there is 
for that of the man who uses his name — now that he is 
dead — to point the moral and adorn the tale of endless 
damnation. 

Mr. Talmage ascends the judgment-seat of Christ too 
soon. 

And I want you to look into this matter closely : Ac- 
cording to Mr. Talmage' s doctrine, James Fisk is now, 
and will forever remain in hell ; a hell in which he 
can not repent, in which he can make no restitution to 
the persons whom he has wronged, or to the divine law 
he has offended against. Those whom he has wronged 
and injured on earth can get no satisfaction except in 
the contemplation of his eternal torture — a satisfaction 
which they can only enjoy by discharging from their 
hearts every spark of human and Christian feeling, and 
becoming devils incarnate, in their rancorous relish for 
revenge. They can never experience the divine delight 
of forgiving a repentant enemy. They can never obey 
the divine injunction, u If thine enemy hunger, feed 
him ; if he thirst, give him drink." They can never 
rise to the sublime height of soul, exemplified by their 
■A. 

% 



50 



The Rational Argument 



Master when He said, "Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do." They can only perpetuate in 
heaven the hatreds of earth, gloat over the thought and 
sight of the tortures of their eneiny, and then address 
themselves to the enjoyment of the holiness, purity, and 
charity of heaven with what appetite they may. 

Mr. Talmage asks if u James Fisk will meet in the 
other world the widows and orphans, whose property he 
swamped in the 1 Black Friday 9 panic \ " 

Is Mr. Talmage, then, sure that his side will be there ? 
Is it a part of his creed, that to have property swamped 
in a Wall Street panic is a certain passport to Paradise I 
There will be rejoicing, in and out of the Stock Ex- 
change, when this new decree of salvation is proclaimed ! 

But will Fisk and those whom he has injured ever 
meet ? Universalism says, Yes ! face to face, in the 
presence of Infinite Justice, in whose hands human 
wrongs are not perpetuated and immortalized, but are 
righted. 

But I beg Mr. Talmage to observe that Fisk was not 
the only actor in that u Black Friday" drama — some of 
the players are living yet ; some of them, for aught I 
know, are members of Mr. Tannage's Church ; or may 
yet be converted by him to his peculiar views of heavenly 
joys. Then what ? Why, then, when they die, they 
will enter the magnified Wall Street of his heaven ; they 
will join his congregation of prosperous saints, and 
gathering around their pastor in that paradise, and look- 
ing down into hell, they will exult in the thought, that 
at last they have got a final corner on James Fisk ! 

Is that the temper of the heavenly host ? Is that the 
spirit that will animate God's elect and God's redeemed f 



The Rational Argument. 



51 



Mr. Talinage exclaims, 44 What a delicious and savory 
place heaven would be if the wretches who went down 
to their graves unwashed, get there ! ?? Now, if the con- 
temptuous pharisaic spirit that dictated this expression 
toward souls, sinful and degraded, but Grod's creatures 
still — if this be heavenly -niindedness, if this be the spirit 
that animates redeemed souls, then this New Testament 
is a mistake — then the life and teachings of Christ are 
wholly false ; then " Love your enemies, bless them 
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for 
them that despitefully use you and persecute you," is 
not a reflection of the spirit of Grod, is not the temper of 
the heavenly mansions. 

Universalists believe, and have no hesitation in say- 
ing that they believe, that James Fisk is, or will be 
saved. Not saved in the sense in which Mr. Tannage 
uses that word — in the sense, namely, of being made 
safe, being secure from punishment ; but saved in the 
New Testament sense ; saved by the eradication, 
through the operation of the divine laws, of all the evil 
dispositions that were in him. As for the rest — as 
for the extent of his penalties, the measure and dura- 
tion of his suffeings, we believe that as he sowed so 
shall he reap. Of the terrible severity of the retributive 
laws we have hints and foretokens in the operation of 
these laws as visible in this life, just as we have evidence 
of the power and potency of the divine mercy, as exhib- 
ited in the operation of the law of forgiveness. The 
more stubborn the ore, the fiercer the fire that separates 
it from its dross. The more rebellious the soul, the more 
imperative and commanding the divine forces that sub- 
due its refractoriness. But there is no question as to the 



52 



The Rational Argument. 



final result. God will subdue all tilings unto Himself. 
He will no more suffer that rebellious soul to continue in 
eternal disobedience than He will suffer Himself to be 
cast from the throne of the universe. Still less will He, 
as Mr. Talmage's theory requires, take means to make 
that rebellion endless, in order that the pain may be 
made endless. Almighty Grod will not accept pain as a 
compromise for disobedience, but He will use pain as the 
instrument to perfect obedience. He will have His law 
honored, and His law can not be honored by eternal 
rebellion, even in eternal pain. It can only be 
honored by obedience — ample, full, and free. u By 
myself have I sworn, the word has gone out of 
my mouth in righteousness and shall not return, that 
unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear, 
surely shall say, in the Lord have I righteousness and 
strength." u The law of the Lord is perfect, converting," 
— not destroying — u the soul." Grod offers His creatures 
no alternative. They must conform at last to his most 
righteous law — a law which is not a mere arbitrary 
decree, but is founded on that eternal nature of things 
which couples well-being with well-doing. He has so 
made man, that there is no peace, no power, no happi- 
ness possible to him, except in conformity to that law. 
He will have you clean. If you are tractable, teachable, 
and obedient, He will perfect you by gentle ministries, 
by disciplines of grace. If you are untractable, violent, 
rebellious, He will burn you clean, and both the grace 
and the fire are eqally expressions of His relentless 
purpose to have you right — a purpose born not of wrath, 
but inspired by His divine good-will toward the crea- 
tures He has made. 



The Rational Argument. 



53 



Mr. Talinage is troubled about bad men in heaven. 
His whole conception of the future is artificial, mechani- 
cal, unauthorized, and unwarrantable. He does not know 
what and where heaven and hell, as places, are — whether 
they exist at all as separate places ; whether the separa- 
tion of good and bad souls be a physical separation in 
space, or a moral and spiritual separation, as it is here ; 
whether it be a separation of persons or a separation of 
qualities, as it is here, where good and bad reside in the 
same person. Even James Fisk had good qualities. 
Even Mr. Talinage may possibly have bad ones, and the 
discriminating justice of Almighty Grod will not ignore 
the one nor the other, by placing the one, with all his 
faults, immediately at death, in the highest heaven, or by 
putting the other, with all his virtues, and latent tenden- 
cies toward goodness, in the lowest hell forever. You 
want to understand that this notion of the final two-fold 
allotment of humanity at death, is a dogma utterly un- 
authorized and unwarrantable. No one can tell where 
the place of heaven is, any more than he can tell where 
the place of hell is. The Bible is silent about places. 
But Christ says, " Neither shall men go seeking and 
saying, 6 Lo ! here, and lo ! there,' for behold the king- 
dom of Grod is within you.' ? The heaven that the Bible 
speaks of, that Christ teaches, is the heaven within. 
And so, while we do not know ivhere heaven and hell 
are as places, we do know what heaven and hell are, as 
states of soul. We know that they exist here, and that 
they exist together, and that they react upon each 
other. Nay, they exist in the same soul, lighting it at 
one time with all the charities of heaven, and devastating 
it at another time with all the passions of hell. Most of 



54 



The Rational Argument. 



us know something by experience of both the heavenly 
and hellish states of temper and spirit. We know that 
the struggle of our life is to subdue the evil, and exalt 
and strengthen the good ; the peril and danger of our 
lives is that the evil desires shall get the upper hand. In 
other words, our struggle is not to get somewhere, but to 
become something. We know that never, under any 
circumstances, in any place, in the most gorgeous ot 
heavens, could we be happy or at peace if we carried 
thither the devilish disposition. This, then — this danger 
of being overcome of evil — is the real peril of existence ; 
the peril which Grod sent Christ to help us through ; and 
which He foresaw when He created us; and against 
which He has provided potent and adequate resources, 
not confined in their operation to this narrow space of 
mortal life, this opening stage of an eternal duration, but 
extending over the whole space and realm of His moral 
government. And this is what David saw, and felt and 
meant, when he said, u Whither shall 1 go from Thy 
spirit, or whither shall T flee from Thy presence ! If I 
ascend up into heaven, Thou art there ; if I make my bed 
in hell, behold Thou art there. If I take the wings of 
the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand 
shall hold me." 

This sense of the awful presence and universal do- 
minion of God's moral government is terrible and over- 
whelming to the soul while it loves sin, but is most ani- 
mating and inspiring to that soul when it learns to hate 
sin and love righteousness. So long as the desire for 
selfish, sinful enjoyment survives in man, so long will he 
be content to have the penalties of his transgressions 



The Rational Argument. 



55 



visited upon others. Grod may violate the fundamental 
principle of justice, and punish the innocent for the 
guilty, so long as lie escapes. This is his degradation. 
But when he awakens to the real nature of sin, and 
sees its inherent vileness, while he feels its mastery, then 
he covets the corrective penalties that will free him from 
its thraldom. He wants to be well, clean, whole. He 
wants not his wrong condoned, but righted. His better 
nature is aroused, his conscience quickened, and the 
highest heaven would be a hell to his awakened noble- 
ness, so long as others were enduring the penalties of his 
misdeeds. 

Contrast this picture with that of Mr. Talmage's sel- 
fish saints, who have carried the principles of Wall street 
bodily into the New Jerusalem, who have accepted a 
mere safety, which is no salvation, at the price of inno- 
cence suffering for their guilt, and who clamor in self- 
righteous disgust to have all u unwashed wretches " kept 
out of their reservation ! 

Mr. Talmage, " The disciple is not above his master, 
nor the servant above his Lord." "If I, then, your 
Lord and Master, have washed your feet ; ye ought also 
to wash one another's feet ! " They only are the disci- 
ples of Christ who have the Christ-spirit, and that 
spirit is not for earth and time alone, but for heaven 
and eternity ; it is " eternal life." 

But life is not all peril, nor is the sense of danger the 
only or the chief motive of our endeavors and struggles 
here. We are sinful beings, but we are also capable of 
righteousness — that wisdom "whose ways are pleasant- 
ness, and whose paths are peace/' And not all our in- 
firmities are sins, but many grow out of our un develop- 



56 The Bational Argument. 

ment, our rudimentary, formative, imperfect condition— 
a condition imposed upon us by our Creator. So that 
not all the trials and difficulties of life, not all its pai^s 
and sorrows are penal and retributive, but many are 
developing and educational. Christ was a sinless being, 
but he suffered, and was u perfected through suffer- 
ing." 

Mr. Talmage brings forward Nero, Robespierre, and 
James Fisk, as types of a class that God, who made 
them, will find it very difficult to deal with, and with 
which Universalism, as Mr. Talmage understands it, can 
do nothing. But, I ask you to suppose that while James 
Fisk was lying wounded at the Grand Central Hotel, he 
had sent for Mr. Talmage, confessed his sin, expressed 
his contrition, professed faith in Christ. Mr. Talmage 
would have given him the Divine assurances of forgive- 
ness, soothed his last moments with promises of heaven. 
Then Mr. Talmage would have gone to his Tabernacle, 
and proclaimed this conversion as a signal instance of 
the Divine grace. Te Deums would have been sung 
to the saving power and glory of God, which had over- 
come that rebellious soul, and melted that stubborn 
heart. But now he is gone, and he did not so go. He 
was stupefied with opium and died unconscious. He is 
out of the reach of Talmage, who seems to think that so 
long as a sinner is on this side of the line, where Tal- 
mage can get at him, there is some hope for him, but 
when he has gone where there is nobody but God to deal 
with him, he is lost utterly and forever ! 

Now, the Universalist church ventures to affirm, on 
both scriptural and rational warrant, that God will save 
that man yet. Not by a miracle of grace, not upon a 



The Rational Argument. 



57 



confession of faith, muttered in the delirium or weakness 
of physical dissolution, but by the steady operation upon 
that spirit of the retributive and saving forces that have 
begun to show their power even here. That even his 
blinded eyes will be opened to see his sin, that his dor- 
mant conscience will be roused to feel remorse. That 
he will be humbled and subdued utterly to the Divine 
will, that his crimes will assume their due enormity in 
his sight, that he will feel that true repentance whose 
only genuine sign is an intense and resistless desire to 
make reparation for the wrong done, and to seek pardon 
of the persons wronged. I ask you, then, if this will be 
a less signal instance of God's power and grace than it 
would have been if it had taken place three years ago ? 
Will it be less a manifestation of God's power and jus- 
tice thus to save the creature He made, than it would 
be to thrust -him into a hopeless, unbeneficial, unending 
pain forever ? I ask you, further, will the one whom 
Fisk has injured most bitterly and deeply on earth, in- 
sist in heaven that his enemy shall never be redeemed ? 
Will the true inhabitants of heaven, those who have 
gone there because of their heavenly spirit, who know 
and feel the love of God and the grace of Christ — will 
they besiege the throne of grace to have that repentant, 
humbled, suffering soul kept out forever ? I tell you, no ! 
The spirits who inhabit heaven, are heavenly spirits 5 
and the chief delight of heavenly spirits is to do as 
Christ did, " seek and save the lost." The wicked man's 
wicked work shall be burnt ; he shall suffer loss, " but 
he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire." 

I ask you to observe the perfect justice of this con- 
summation. u The Judge of all the earth will do right." 



58 



The Rational Argument. 



u Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ?? 
What he sows : no less, no more. Justice is vindicated 
and established when the wrong is made right, not when 
one evil is sought to be cured by a greater. 

A thousand human beings are born every year in this 
great city, into conditions of poverty, degradation, in- 
heritance, so fatal to all good, so pregnant with all evil, 
that the greatest wonder, the standing miracle, is that 
they don't grow up even worse than they are. Now, 
according to Mr. Talmage' s theory, Grod takes these un- 
savory wretches, these depraved, bereaved, and friend- 
less souls, whose whole earthly career is a hell, a wild- 
eyed race of sin, want, and wretchedness, from the cra- 
dle to the grave — Grod snatches them from this hell and 
plunges them into a deeper and more piteous hell, an 
endless carnival of ruin, perpetuated and eternalized by 
the very Being who created them ! 

" Our Father which art in heaven; hallowed be thy 
name*" forgive the blasphemy which thus ascribes to 
thy Divine nature the attributes and temper of an infi- 
nite devilhood ! 

If you want to know what blasphemy against the 
Holy Ghost is, this it is : — a sin the most ineradicable 
and persistent of all the sins possible to man, because 
bigotry, selfishness, ignorance, and hatred are its allies 
and its prompters. 

Divine justice is done, Christian friends, when the 
wrong is made right. Human justice does as it can with 
imperfect knowledge and inadequate instruments. It 
hangs the murderer, but it can not restore the murdered, 
nor make whole the broken circle of relations, duties, and 
rights. But Divine justice is not thus hampered. Infi- 



The Bational Argument. 



59 



nite power, everlasting time, are its prerogatives. It can 
punish the murderer, restore the murdered, right the 
wrong, and cause "the wrath of man to praise Grod." 
Human law can not heal its own breaches ; it can only 
inadequately punish the transgressor. Divine law can 
both punish and restore. A law is honored by obedi- 
ence, not by eternal rebellion, in eternal pain. Divine 
justice can vindicate itself by bringing its rebels back, 
not merely to torment, but to obedience ; not to mechan- 
ical, physical, brute-force obedience, but to moral obedi- 
ence= — a willing, glad conformity to a Divine order, per- 
ceived to be absolutely the highest and the best. 

Thus, Universalism denies the endless perpetuation of 
evil. Sin, wrong, and suffering shall have an end. The 
discords of this life shall not be augmented in the next, 
nor increase and endure throughout eternity. Justice 
and righteousness shall prevail. 

Universalism is accordant with the highest reason, be- 
cause it affirms harmony and completeness as the final 
result of the Divine Government. 

III. — The Abettor of Bad Morals. 
Mr. Talmage next proceeds to assert that " Univer- 
salism is the abettor of bad morals. ?; Having attacked 
the opinions and convictions of Universalists with results 
not quite to his satisfaction, he will now attack their 
moral character. And that he feels himself now coming 
on to difficult and dangerous ground is evident from his 
method of attack. Mr. Talmage may be an honorable 
man in private life, but this public utterance would be 
appealed to in vain to prove it. To sustain the grave 
charge which he has brought, there were two honorable 



60 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



methods open to him, — both of which he has rejected. 
It was competent for him to attempt to show that the 
principles of Universalism are such as logically lead 
to immorality. Universalism is the belief that u What- 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap : v — that 
though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be un- 
punished ; JJ — that " he that doeth wrong shall receive for 
the wrong which he hath done ; and there is no respect 
of persons. v It was competent for him to attempt to 
show that this belief tends to wickedness, — that a belief 
in the strict and inexorable operation of the Law of 
Retribution diminishes moral restraint, — that the belief 
in a God of anger, passion and caprice, whose favor and 
indulgence can be won, as in an oriental despot, by the 
intercession of a favorite, — a God as capricious in forgiv- 
ing as in punishing ; — it was competent for him to at- 
tempt proof that belief in such a God is a better edu- 
cator of conscience than the belief in a God of perfect Jus- 
tice and Holiness who has established an eternal moral 
order for the government of mankind. 

Or, disliking to attempt this, it would have been legit- 
imate for Mr. Talmage to have made the attempt to pro- 
duce unquestioned instances of men who have been made 
bad by their Universalism ; or instances in which the 
Universalist church had condoned offenses against good 
morals ; or to put his finger on the place where Univer- 
salist teachers had encouraged men t3 vicious practices. 
It would avail him nothing to point out instances of very 
decided imperfection on the part of Universalists ; — on 
such a field there would be blows to take as well as blows 
to give ; — what he had to show, to sustain his serious 
charge, was authentic instances of bad morals that were 



The Bad- Morals Argument 



61 



the direct fruit of Universalist doctrines. This, the 
only other honorable course, open to hini, he has also de- 
clined; and, aware of his pulpit license to make state- 
ments which elsewhere made would subject him to strin- 
gent corrective penalties, he has used that license to the 
utmost ; as witness what follows : 

He charges against Universalism that it is u the High 
Priest of Suicide ! " 

What does he bring to sustain that charge ? convenient- 
ly ambiguous like all his others, and intended to convey 
an imputation which he does not like to definitely express. 

We should expect, at least, an array of facts and fig- 
ures, showing that the direct result of Universalism was 
to produce suicide, and that, as a matter of fact, Univer- 
salists were committing hari-kari to such an extent as 
to relieve Mr. Talmage of his very evident fear of the 
increase of Universalism ! 

Instead of this, what have we ? Why we have a story 
about a man near Utica, whe went into the presence of 
a Universalist minister with a loaded pistol (like another 
Mutual Friend) and upon receiving an assurance, in re- 
sponse to his question, that he would go straight to 
heaven at death, put the pistol to his temple with intent 
to take his own life, which act the minister prevented by 
shouting "hell" at him ! 

This is the proof, and all the proof, that Mr. Talmage 
offers in support of his charge that "Universalism is the 
High Priest of Suicide ! " 

There are some reasons why I am sorry that the story 
is not true. It has so long been a part of the stock-in- 
trade of the professional revivalist, always brought in at 
that part of his programme which says, " Here attack 



62 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



Universalism," — it has been so often on the lips of such 
saintly Christians as Burchard and Knapp, that it seems 
a pity to have it turn out that men of such scrupulous 
exactitude should have been giving currency to a myth I 
Such, however, is the melancholy fact. The scene of the 
alleged incident has been thoroughly investigated, the 
story found to be without foundation, and public retrac- 
tion of it has been several times compelled. I am sorry 
that its falsity prevents me from expressing the respect 
which I should certainly feel for a minister who could 
retain his gravity and self-possession under such trying 
circumstances, and scare a fool from his folly by so sim- 
ple an expedient ! 

Having given Mr. Talmage's " evidence " more attention 
than it deserves, I desire now to speak to the matter itself* 
Universalism is the " High Priest of Suicide " says Mr. 
Talmage. Now, if Universalism were what Mr. Talmage 
falsely calls it ; — if it were the belief that, whenever and 
however we die, we go direct to one and the same heaven, 
irrespective of our conduct and character in this life ; — if 
Universalism answered in any respect to these malicious 
libels upon it, it would still not be provocative of sui- 
cide. No doctrine will of itself, unassisted by physical 
or mental disease, overcome the deep-seated, primal in- 
stinct of self preservation. The suicidal mania is a 
mental disease, induced generally by disappointment, 
remorse, shame, fear, revenge, and the like. From the 
first recorded suicide in Bible history, — that of Samson, 
whose motive was revenge, — down to the recent self de- 
struction of the clergyman in Washington — (a believer 
of Mr. Talmage's own kind, by the way) — whose motive 
was shame, the malign and depressing passions have, 



The Bad-Morals Argument 



63 



with few exceptions, been the exciting cause. Religious 
excitement, so called, has driven its thousands to suicide. 
It has not, however, been an excitment produced by the 
doctrines of Universalism, but a frenzy directly resulting 
from that gospel of eternal Ruin and Despair, of which 
Mr. Talmage is a chief apostle. No man ever lifted his 
hand against his own life while his heart was full of the 
divine assurance of final victory over all evil and disaster, 
which Universalism, of all doctrines, alone can give. 

"Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make 
mad." I can imagine no other explanation of the folly 
which induced the Tabernacle preacher to bring against 
Universalism a charge which recoils with such fatal 
effect upon his own doctrines. For the sad and length- 
ening record of self-destruction has no sadder page than 
that which attests the suicides produced by the creed 
and dogma of despair. Let the explanation be what it 
may, the fact is indisputable, that when a man is con- 
vinced that his unescapable doom is an endless hell, he 
has rather a tendency to rush headlong upon his awful 
fate by suicide than to attempt to evade it by prolonging 
his life. Convince a soul that it has committed the un- 
pardonable sin, and you bring on the suicidal mania, 
ending inevitably with self-destruction. 

Out of many sad and awful instances of this, one 
which occurred almost under my own eyes, has left an 
ineffaceable record on my heart. 

The victim was a lady well known to me, about fifty 
years of age, who had been from her girlhood a devout, 
a consecrated, a most conscientious Christian woman. 
She had lived in the fear of God and in good will to men, 
as she understood it ; in membership of one of the ortho- 



64 The Bad-Morals Argument. 



dox churches — I will not call its name — but it was one 
of the strictest sects. 

A revival broke out in the village where she and I 
lived, and she was drawn into the vortex of it. And as 
the gloom produced by the Revivalist's pictures of end- 
less, vindictive torments deepened on her ruind, the aw- 
ful thought stole in at last that she had committed the 
u unpardonable sin." And she brooded upon it, and it 
never relaxed its hold upon her, but only deepened and 
intensified, until a u horror of great darkness" settled 
upon her soul ; and on one of the sweetest May mornings 
that ever dawned on this world, she arose at an early 
hour, from the side of her sleeping husband, procured his 
razor, went into the cellar of her house, and there took 
her own life. But a few hours after the deed I was 
there ; and the impression produced upon me by that 
sight will never, never be effaced. As I stood and 
looked, I asked : Poor, misguided, hunted, desperate soul ? 
were you driven to this by the Gospel, — by "the truth 
as it is in Jesus ? " and that dim, silent room seemed full of 
voices answering: u No, no, no ! This is the result of 
weak, cruel, blinded man's teaching, — not God's truth." 

Many thousands of even sadder cases than this are 
on record, Mr. Talmage, produced, not by Univer- 
salism, but by what you vainly call the Gospel, — Christ's 
" Glad Tidings." 

Why, let us try the ring of a few sentences of the 
gospel of Christ and compare them with the gospel ac- 
cording to Talmage : 

u Fear not: for behold I bring you good tidings of 
great joy, which shall be unto all people ; " — proclaims 
the angel, announcing the advent of the Saviour. 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



65 



— u Not to all, not to all ! " shouts the Tabernacle 
preacher,- — " good tidings to the few, — awful tidings of 
infinite sorrow to the many.' 7 

" Through the tender mercy of our God whereby the 
dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to 
them which sit in darkness and in the shadow of death," 
says the gospel according to Christ. 

— -"News from below of inextinguishable wrath and 
endless damnation," responds Talmage. 

"The Son of man is come to seek and save that which 
was lost," says Jesus Christ. 

— " I stand here to proclaim the hopeless irrecovera- 
ble condition and eternal suffering of the lost," thunders 
the Brooklyn gospeller. 

" I say unto you that joy shall be in heaven over one 
sinner that repent eth, more than over ninety and nine 
just persons who need no repentance," says the Lord 
Christ. 

— " What a delicious, savory place heaven will be if 
all the unwashed souls that die go there," sneers Mr. 
Talmage. 

u I will draw all men unto me," says Christ. 

— kt Countless millions shall be rejected and cast off 
forever," affirms the preacher of Brooklyn the Tabernacle* 

Christian men and women, which is the gospel ? 
Which doctrine would a wise physician prescribe as a 
preventive to the suicidal mania ? 

I ask you which doctrine is the " high priest of suicide V 7 
Universalism assures a man deliberately contemplating* 
suicide (these are, however, exceptional cases ; men don't 
reason themselves into suicide).— Universalism assures 
the man deliberately contemplating suicide that he will 



66 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



change nothing for the better by that act. That he can 
not kill his soul ; that he will think, feel, and remember 
even more keenly and vividly after the act than before 
it ; that he goes not away from scrutiny but toward 
scrutiny ; that he can hide nothing, conceal nothing, 
and that, therefore, the wisest act of which a fallen 
human being is capable is to bravely face his disaster, 
shames, contempts, and distresses, which thus met will 
form steps by which, through the grace of God, he shall 
climb out of the lowest depths into the light of final 
victory. 

I can not enter, either in feeling or thought, into the 
inconceivable levity with which Mr. Talmage in his ser- 
mon has treated this saddest of all human phenomena. 
According to the reporters' notes, his audience were 
" amused" when he warned any who were contemplat- 
ing suicide u not to leave a note for their friends, say- 
ing, Meet me in heaven." 

" You won't go there" says Mr. Talmage. 

Then there was 66 amusement," in the audience. 
Why i What matter for laughter had been started f 
Nothing but this ; the endless, hopeless, irrecoverable 
damnation of a human soul had been jocularly announced 
by this minister of religion. What is one more soul ad- 
ded to the millions already burning in this endless hell f 
Nothing — nothing, of course. But I think there must 
have been some in that audience, who having lost a son, 
brother, father, husband, wife, daughter, sister, or near 
friend by suicide, did not quite feel like joining in the 
amusement created by this flippant announcement of an 
unspeakably awful doom ! I suppose I could bring no 
more forcible illustration of heartlessness which this 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



67 



dogma often begets, or of the utter lack of real belief in 
it, than is thus shown when the preacher jokes and the 
audience laugh in the course of its presentation. Rich- 
ard Baxter's audiences did not laugh. George Whitfield's 
congregations were not " amused. 77 Jonathan Edwards 7 
hearers groaned and shrieked when this dogma was pre- 
sented to them with an earnestness and power which 
attested at least the honesty of the preacher, and which 
almost made the doctrine respectable, in spite of its utter 
groundlessness. There is joy among the angels in 
heaven when one sinner repents. There is laughter in 
the Brooklyn Tabernacle when the endless ruin of a 
sinful sold is announced ! 

In the Brooklyn Eagle of Tuesday last I observed a 
review of a new book by Mr. Tannage (and toward the 
sale of that book I give this gratuitous notice), in the 
preface to which Mr. Talmage says : u I enjoy this 
world. I suppose I laugh more and laugh louder than 
almost any other man. # # This world is a rose ; 
this universe a garland. 7 ' These are his words, and his 
reviewer thinks this a very singular state of mind for a 
man who holds and announces the belief that thousands 
of his fellow men are dropping into hell every day ! He 
thinks that if Mr. Talmage should see a man looking on 
at a horrible railway accident, and laughing long and 
loud, he would call him a heartless wretch, and reprove 
him with no slight indignation. Yet his offense is venial 
compared with Mr. Talmage 7 s attitude ; standing in a 
lost and dying world, himself with a commission to save, 
and the eternal destiny of thousands dependent therefore 
on his faithfulness, yet so little oppressed with a sense 
of his responsibility as to be able to " laugh more and 



68 The Bad-Morals Argument. 



louder than most men," and so disengaged in mind as to 
find k ' this world a rose, this universe a garland." u I will 
laugh like a hyena," says Shakespeare. Either Mr. 
Talniage's laugh is of the hyena kind, or it is like that 
mentioned by Solomon, a as the crackling of thorns un- 
der a pot, so is the laughing of the fool." The review- 
er, however, thinks that the secret of this laughing is in 
the fact that there are secured seats in heaven for the 
orthodox clergy and their friends ! 

Mr. Talmage, as you may remember in the early 
part of his sermon, instanced Nero as a specimen 
" hard case " which Universalism would find it diffi- 
cult to deal with. He need not have gone so far for 
his illustration ! Nero fiddled while Rome was burn- 
ing, but Talmage laughs while a universe is in flames, 
and while between the rising and the setting sun thou- 
sands are dropping into eternal fires ! Considering 
the differences in the advantages and training of the 
two men, I consider Mr. Talmage the harder case of the 
two, yet is not my faith shaken in the efficacy of those 
corrective punishments which shall finally cause him 
to u do justly and love mercy and walk humbly" 
before his God. 

We are prepared to expect from the preacher of this 
discourse, having reviewed him so far, a spirit and temper 
that falls noticeably short of the New Testament defini- 
tion of heavenly-mindedness. We learned very early 
in the review not to look for scholarly exposition, 
Christian fairness, or even common courtesy ; but rather 
to expect noisy declamation without argument, and un- 
scrupulous assertion without proof. That we are not to 
be disappointed hi this expectation, witness this further 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



69 



statement which, that I may do him no injustice, I give 
in Mr. Talmage's own words : 

u In the New England villages, or the villages of the 
far West, where there is only one church, and that a 
Universalist Church, or where the Universalist Church 
is dominant above all others, — in such villages inevitably 
and always you find profane swearing, drunkenness, 
sabbath-breaking, lust, and every form of abomination. 
Give the doctrine of Universalism full swing in any vil- 
lage or city and it consumes it, financially, morally and 
spiritually ! w 

This insane statement, which, from its inherent incred- 
ibility and absurdity, carries its own refutation on its 
face, would be unworthy of a moment's serious attention 
were it not that it furnished a vivid illustration of Mr. 
Tannage's pulpit recklessness, and of the fatuity to 
which partizan hatred drives him. T can not wholly 
think that it was a deliberate statement. Although it 
bears marks of premeditation, I think there is some rea- 
son to hope that the preacher was hurried by the exi- 
gencies of his extemporaneous discourse into this pas- 
sionate, ill-contrived, aucl utterly unfounded slander 
against the good name and fair fame of a Christian 
church and people ! Mr. Talmage has fallen under the 
operation of the law of hatred expounded by the apostle 
John : " He that hateth his brother is in darkness, and 
walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth. 
because that darkness hath blinded his eyes." He has 
fallen into the snare of allowing himself to make a state- 
ment which, even if it were true, he could not possibly 
know to be true. The testimony of a thousand unim- 
peachable witnesses would be insufficient to sustain a 



70 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



libel so comprehensive ; yet he specifies no single in- 
stance of the u financial, moral, and spiritual consump- 
tion " of a city or village by Universalism, presents no 
witness, and offers no testimony except his own unsup- 
ported word ! " In the villages of New England and of 
the far West/' — this is as definitely as he will locate the 
scene of the devastations of Universalism. Where, 
Mr. Talniage, where ? Will you not name one single vil- 
lage f No, he will not ! Moreover, I ask you to observe 
a certain sagacious cowardice in the manner of this 
slander. "In the New England villages/ 7 he says, 
u and in the villages of the far West, where there is 
only one church and that a Universalist church, or where 
the Universalist church is dominant, — in such villages in- 
evitably and always you find profane swearing, drunk- 
enness, sabbath breaking, lust, and every form of abom- 
ination." Now is not that slander cunningly insinuated I 
He does not boldly say that Universalism produces these 
vices and abominations, but he connects the presence of 
Universalist churches in villages with the vices that are 
found in all considerable villages, in such a manner as to 
lead his hearers to infer a relation of cause and effect, 
which he hesitates to openly charge. Does Mr. Tal- 
niage mean to say that these vices are found only in those 
villages where a Universalist church exists ? Why 
any coward can safely make you such statements by the 
hour ! Suppose it to be said : u Mr. Tannage's Taber- 
nacle is the dominant church in the city of Brooklyn. 
Yet in that city inevitably and always you will find pro- 
fane swearing, drunkenness, sabbath-breaking, lust — 
and enough of it — and every form of abomination." 
That statement would be strictly and literally true, yet 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



71 



it would convey a lying insinuation, and convey it in a 
manner deserving only of contempt. I commend to the 
Tabernacle preacher this description, by Isaiah, of a 
state of temper and spirit in which he will find a sugges- 
tive analogy : u He feedeth on ashes, a deceived heart 
hath turned him aside that he can not deliver his soul, 
nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand ? v . 

As to the substance of this reckless slander, I am 
thoroughly competent to speak. I am, and for nearly 
seven years have been, the Secretary of the Universalist 
General Convention. In my office I know the location 
of every Universalist church in the United States. And 
as thoroughly as any non-resident can, I know the ma- 
terial, social, moral, and spiritual status of these churches, 
their numbers, their organization, their contribu- 
tions to charitable, reformatory, missionary, and educa- 
tional objects, their influence on the communities where 
they are located, the stand they take against the vices of 
the age, and their attitude in favor of moral reforms, 
their spiritual zeal as shown by their observance of the 
Church ordinances and the membership of their churches 
and Sunday Schools. All these things are matters of 
record, as well as of public knowledge. And on the 
strength of this actual knowledge, which is established 
by the clearest proofs, I declare Mr. Talmage's state- 
ments in derogation of the moral influence of Univer- 
salism to be without the shadow of a foundation. They 
are utterly, comprehensively, absurdly false. More than 
this, they are the direct converse of the truth. Mr. 
Talmage might know, if he would, that Universalism is 
to-day upholding the Bible and Christianity, and stimu- 
lating and moulding Christian life and character in re- 



72 



The Bad-Morals Argument, 



gions where the doctrine that he preaches has almost 
wholly lost its power. 

He does know that Universalism enforces the moral 
law by sanctions far more solemn, imperative, and con- 
trolling than any which his doctrine supplies. He 
preaches a doctrine of compromises, substitutions, and al- 
ternatives. Universalism declares the eternal necessity 
of personal conformity to righteousness. He preaches 
eternal damnation as an alternative to obedience. Uni- 
versalism declares that no soul can take refuge in eter- 
nal damnation from the necessity of obedience. 

Mr. Talmage has been courteously invited to verify 
the statements made in his sermon. He will not do it, 
nor attempt it.* 

He has made of his pulpit a Coward's Castle. A Cow- 
ard's Castle is defined to be "that pulpit or that platform 
from which a man, surrounded by his friends, in the ab- 
sence of his opponents, secure of applause, and safe from 
a reply, denounces those who differ from him." 

It may be proper to inquire for the motive which has 
led Mr. Talmage to make such a sorry exhibition of him- 
self. What is it that so lamentably exasperates him ? 
If it is the doctrines of Universalism, let us examine and 
see if they ought to excite the hostility of any servant of 
God or well-wisher of men. 

Universalism teaches that the purpose and agencies of 

* This prediction has been verified. Rev. H. R. Nye, pastor of the 
First Universalist Church, in Brooklyn — the Church of Our Father — 
addressed, through the Brooklyn papers, an open letter to Mr. Talmage, 
courteously requesting him to make good his charges against Uni- 
versalism, offering his pulpit for that purpose, or to bring his entire 
congregation to the Tabernacle to hear Mr. Tal mage's reply. Nei- 
ther this letter nor a subsequent one availed to draw Mr. Talmage 
from his Coward's Castle. He speaks his slander and retreats. 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



73 



the Divine Government are so potent and resistless as to 
bring every sinful soul to repentance. Its first word to 
sinners is therefore the word of Christ, u Repent, for the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand." At hand, not afar off — 
a spiritual, real, eternal life. u For the kingdom of God 
is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and 
joy in the Holy Ghost." 

Mr. Talmage, on the contrary, believes that the Di- 
vine Government is under such limitations that it will 
save but a part (an almost infinitely minute part, if sal- 
vation is confined to this life and to the visible earthly 
sphere and operation of Christianity) and doom the rest 
to measureless despair and eternal ruin. 

Universalism teaches that the moral and spiritual pro- 
gress and possibilities of man are not confined to this 
life, this opening stage of an eternal existence, a stage 
so unequal in its conditions and duration, as to defy all 
attempts to reconcile it with Divine justice if it is a final 
probation. Mr Talmage teaches that this life is a final 
probation ; and sets up official conditions of salvation, 
one result of which is to people hell with some of the 
most royal and saintly souls of earth. 

Universalism teaches that salvation is personal right- 
eousness, the essential condition of any permanent happi- 
ness or power in any world, and to be gained by the help 
of Christ, the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, the church, 
prayer, the law of retribution, and many minor agen- 
cies. Mr. Talmage teaches that salvation is in vicarious 
or imputed righteousness, which can be gained by a 
miraculous intervention at the very latest moment of any 
ill-spent life, and which must be gained here or not at 
all. 



74 



The Bad-Morals Argument, 



Universalism seeks to remove from human belief, as a 
sanction of morality, the unfounded, inexplicable, unde- 
monstrable dogma of an endless hell, of a hopeless, unbene- 
ficial, motiveless eternity of torment, — a dogma which, 
where it is believed, can only excite an animal, irrational, 
short-lived terror ; which makes men indeed pliable in 
the hands of priests, but which tends of itself to no ra- 
tional amendment of life : which leads men to confound 
salvation from sin with safety from the pains of hell ; 
a dogma of animalism and sensuousness which confuses 
things physical and spiritual, and tends to degrade the 
pursuit of eternal righteousness into a mere selfish scramble 
for personal safety ; a dogma according to which sin is to be 
dreaded in proportion as it brings pain, and because it brings 
pain, which sees no intrinsic righteousness in Eight, good- 
ness in Good, or evil in Evil ; a dogma that u seeks to 
make men virtuous by directing their gaze into the 
mouth of a furnace and to whip souls into heaven with a 
lash of fire ! v 

Universalism proposes to substitute for this, as part, 
and part only of the sanctions of morality, a rational 
fear of the inevitable consequences of wrong-doing ; 
consequences governed by law, certain and inexorable ; 
and continuing until wrong-doing is abandoned and 
the sinful disposition is eradicated. Universalism sub- 
stitutes for the dogma of endless hell, with its un- 
scripturalness, its unreasonableness, its sorry practical 
results on mankind for twelve hundred years, the doc- 
trine of retribution by law, founded in eternal justice 
and truth. For a moral government of practical injus- 
tice, caprice, and favoritism, — an irresponsible despotism, 
it substitutes a government of Law and Order ; which is 



The Bad-Morals Argument 



not a mere temporary expedient — God's afterthought to 
rescue a ruined world, but the plan of Eternal Wisdom 
for the development, education, and moral perfection of 
the race. And wherever this doctrine is preached, the 
intellectual enlightenment which it first brings is fol- 
lowed by moral improvement, by a deeper sense of 
present duty and responsibility, an increasing perception 
of divine sanctions, of the sinfulness of sin and the 
beauty of holiness, of the sweetness and power of the 
Christian life. Why, when I think of what Universalists 
are doing and have done, when I look at the great 
names that are on the rolls of the church, when I re- 
member the faithful labors of its ministry and its laity 
through years of misconception and persecution, when I 
consider what its contribution has been and is to the 
beneficent reforms of the age, when I see the genuine 
personal morality that it cultivates and the Christian 
piety which it evokes, and when I see what a broad 
light it throws upon the mysteries of Providence, and 
what its power is to enlighten and inspire — when I think 
of these things, I will not exalt Universalism unduly, 
nor boast of my religion, but I say with the Apostle 
Paul, " No man shall stop me of this boasting ": Uni- 
versalism is the " power of God unto salvation." 

And if Mr. Talmage wants to know what that doctrine is 
which unfixes and unsettles the very foundation of human 
morality, I can tell him. It is the doctrine of a substi- 
tuted, vicarious righteousness ; a doctrine which teaches 
man that he has neither the power nor the opportunity 
to fulfill the strict demands of God's law ; that therefore 
its requirements have been fulfilled for him in conde- 
scension to his inherent worthlessness ; that he can ap- 



76 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



propriate the obedience of another by faith, and satisfy 
the requirements of justice at the end of his days of 
wickedness by a death-bed repentance. Now justice 
lies at the foundation of morality. Teach a man that it is 
just for man or God to punish the innocent for the guilty, 
and let the guilty go free, and you have undermined 
the very corner-stone of morality. Then if you add to 
this doctrine the idea of a mechanical, official salvation, 
a salvation conveyed by a drop of water on the forehead, 
by the sign of the cross, by a muttered confession in 
the agony of death, conveyed or withheld at the pleas- 
ure of the church, priest, or minister, — you teach men 
this, and you pervert the sense of justice, blunt the edge 
of conscience, and keep the world in a whirl of moral 
confusion. 

I will tell Mr Talmage what is an immoral spectacle — 
a spectacle often witnessed of the degradation of our 
u popular theology. " It is the spectacle of such a man as 
Anton Probst, the murderer in cold blood of a family of sev- 
en, addressing his fellow men from the gallows' platform 
with a condescending invitation to meet him in heaven ! 
Quick as lightning the question comes, u Where are this 
man's seven victims while he speaks V 9 They didn't fulfill 
the conditions of an official salvation. Xo priest or minister 
came to their dying bed : they could fulfill nothing ; they 
were dispatched with an axe in the dead of night, with- 
out warning, no space granted for repentance, sent to 
their last account with all their imperfections on their 
heads — sent there by the hands of this very man who 
now leaps from the gallows platform into the paradise of 
God! 

If you want immoral teaching, if you want a spectacle 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



77 



calculated to confuse men's minds utterly as to what 
eternal justice and right are, look on that picture ! It is 
not a spectacle furnished by the Universalist Church, 
but furnished by that theology, the denial of which Mr. 
Talmage stigmatizes as immoral. 

It may here properly be asked how Universalism 
deals with the dying sinner. I answer, With the 
truth — aiming to produce a repentance u not to be re- 
pented of." Eepentance is always the first step toward 
salvation, but no repentance is genuine that is based on 
the desire to elude or escape the just consequences of 
wrong-doing. Universalism, in the cell of the con- 
demned murderer, aims first of all to produce a real 
sense of the wrong that has been done, a sense so true, 
keen, and quick as to raise in the condemned man's soul 
that intense, overwhelming desire to right the wrong, 
which is the only sign of true repentance. 

Instead of being willing to go to heaven while his vic- 
tim is in hell, the truly repentant murderer will pray, 
" Let me take his place, and expiate in my own person 
the wrong I have done him. Let no man be punished 
for what I have done. I have sinned before heaven and 
against this man. Give me the opportunity, through 
any service or pain, to make this great wrong right. I 
see what my sin is, not in its consequences alone, but in 
itself, and my awakened conscience can never find joy 
or peace till I have undone the evil." 

To this genuine repentance Universalism answers : 
Through God's justice and grace you shall have the op- 
portunity. 

Then the murderer appears on the scaffold to meet his 
doom, not addressing the amazed witnesses with the 



78 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



condescending invitation to meet him in heaven, but 
saying: 66 Take warning by me. So low has my sin 
brought me that I embrace with joy the fate which you 
shudder at. Through this human judgment I fall into 
the hands of Divine Justice. I go, through what labor, 
humiliation, and sorrow I know not, to repair the wrong 
I have done, knowing that I shall never find peace till 
that is accomplished." 

Such sentiments from the lips of a dying murderer 
will fall upon the witnessing hearts and consciences like 
that very word of God which is u quick and powerful 
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to 
the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints 
and marrow." 

A fitful gratitude for an unjust and fictitious deliver- 
ance is a poor safeguard against the stress of human pas- 
sion, and a miserably inadequate substitute in the human 
heart for a cultivated and deepening sense of eternal 
moral obligations. 

Many of you have doubtless seen the well-known tract, 
containing an account of the conversion, by Bishop Bur- 
net, of Wilmot, the Earl of Bochester ; who was a kind of 
English James Fisk, with advantages. That is, he had 
the advantage of being an educated man, and he had a 
title. He was simply the most profligate man of the 
profligate times of Charles II, He died at the age of 
thirty-four, an old man, worn out by his vices and ex- 
cesses, and his mind, as his biographer tells us, was con- 
siderably shattered. The attention of Bishop Burnet was 
directed to him, and moved no doubt as Collyer says, 
by the pity of a noble mind, and moved also, no doubt, 
by the desire to convert one who was at once an infidel 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



79 



and an earl, the Bishop visited him. And this tract tells 
us, as the result of this visit, that this man repented and 
was forgiven, that he died in peace and went to heaven, 
and this was an unequaled triumph of God's grace. 

Now, I no more doubt that Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 
is, or will be saved, than I doubt the existence of Al- 
mighty God, of His power, of His justice, or His love. 
But to set that man at once, without expiation of his 
offenses or rectification of his character, singing at the 
foot of the great white throne, while the women that he 
ruined were walking through the London streets down 
to hell, while there were a hundred homes in England 
where broken-hearted mothers sat mourning for daughters 
beguiled by him, while the songs written by him were 
just setting out to do their damning work upon genera- 
tions yet unborn, — to see all this mischief and wrong 
flowing from that one man, and then to picture him as a 
glorified saint in paradise, with no care or thought for 
what he had done, basking in the sunlight of God's 
favor — I say that to give this as an illustration of the 
Divine Government is to utterly confound every senti- 
ment of justice and every principle of morality. "Ye 
have made the commandment of God of none effect 
by your traditions.'' 

It is this teaching that discredits all religion in the 
minds of intelligent, thoughtful, observing, honorable 
men. It is this that disjoins Religion from Morality, di- 
vorces Piety from Honesty, separates Salvation from 
Righteousness. 

Men trade on their religion, and speculate on their 
chances of paradise, driving a sharp bargain with their 
Saviour with as keen a relish as with their business rival. 



80 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



u Show me," says Froude, " a nation whose trade is 
dishonesty and I will show you a people whose religion is 
a sham." Mr. Tahnage talks about the u infinite sham 
of modern Universalism." The religion which this 
Brooklyn preacher scorns will save this age from the 
scorn of times to come. Mr. Talmage is preaching a 
system of doctrine which was once, when backed by an 
intense moral earnestness, effective against unrighteous- 
ness, but which now, outgrown and outworn, is a fatal 
barrier to personal rectitude ; no longer credible to human 
intelligence nor answering to human needs, and, having 
lost its life and force, its maintenance from the pulpit 
makes religion more and more an unreality in daily life. 
It is this that lifts the pressure of eternal duty from the 
souls of men ; and it is this absence of life and reality in 
the dogmas that has sent one branch of the church to 
Rationalism and the other to Sacerdotalism, and gives 
over all between these extremes to the reign of Senti 
mentalism. When the living spirit of religion is hot in 
men's hearts, they do not spend their time and strength 
in mere scholastic definitions nor in puerile disputes 
about rites, ceremonies, and genuflexions. 

But when doctrines are insisted upon which can no 
longer be believed, and the church, perceiving that it 
has lost its hold upon the intellect, directs its remaining 
strength to arousing the religious emotions which, when 
awakened, it can not guide, then comes the era of Senti- 
mentalism. Religion becomes a flaccid, boneless body. 
Men like Talmage strive in vain to resuscitate a dead 
superstition; u liberal" orthodoxy betakes itself to sen- 
timent, sacerdotalism breaks out in new discussions of 
tallow-chandlery and millinery, furnishing and postur- 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



81 



ing, rationalism erects the Church of the Divine Uncer- 
tainty and instals as pastor the Rev. Dr. Dubious, vet- 
eran ghouls like Hammond denote themselves to fright- 
ening babies into the kingdom, Moody and Sankey go 
abroad and Yarley comes abroad, because "a prophet is 
not without honor, save in his own country," Eomanism 
begins openly to grasp at secular power ; and meanwhile 
the tide of business, political and social immorality rises 
higher. 

There is need of a church that shall recall humanity 
to the fact that Righteousness is eternal life, that shall 
reassert the indissoluble relation between sowing and 
reaping; and emphasize anew the eternal moral necessity 
that connects well-being with well-doing. 

Our civil war, which did so many things, opened men's 
eyes to the woful inefficiency of the creed Mr. Talmage 
preaches to meet the actual exigencies of life, and cover 
the facts of human experience. 

The necessity of an official salvation was utterly 
ignored during the war. Remember the hosts of young 
men who left their homes at the call of their country, at 
what they deemed the call of duty, marched to the bat- 
tle-field and laid down their lives at the altar of liberty. 

The whole broad land is dotted with their graves. 
They sleep among the everglades of Florida, on the 
banks of the muddy Mississippi, under the shadow of 
the blue Virginia hills. 

They lie where they fell, thousands upon thousands, 

wdth their faces to the foe. 

" On Fame's eternal camping ground 
Their silent tents are spread, 
And G-lory guards, with solemn round, 
The bivouac of the dead ! " 

6 



82 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



But what of their souls ? What of their eternal desr- 
tiny ! 

The fatal bullet, so unseen and so swift, left them no 
time for that official repentance which Mr. Talmage de- 
clares essential to salvation. They died, thousands of 
them, unconverted, unregenerated, and doomed, by the 
direct teachings of his creed, to hopeless, irrecovera- 
ble, immitigable damnation. Yet, when those sad bur- 
dens, those oblong boxes that we learned to know so 
well, came from the bloody battle-fields to seek burial at 
the birth-place, near peaceful country homes, in quiet 
churchyards, did the preachers, called upon to speak the 
words of trust and hope, did they mount their pulpits 
and preach the doctrines of their creed ? Not so. The 
war had brought out realities, and the spirit awakened 
was too deep and true to tolerate for an instant the in- 
finite falsehood of the dogmas. The ministers ignored 
their creeds, and spoke instead the word of the living 
God. They grew eloquent upon the glory and rewards 
of sacrifice, they magnified true manhood, they exalted 
patriotism, they comforted sorrow-stricken hearts with 
the very word and spirit of Christ ! Brought face to 
face with the intense .realities of that time, the inade- 
quate, irrational, futile dogma broke down utterly. 
Why, when our honored and beloved chief magistrate 
was done to death by the hand of an assassin (an assas- 
sin whose offered repentance Mr. Talmage would have 
been bound to accept, and whom, by the terms of his 
creed and the practices of his life he would have dis- 
missed with a shout of "glory" to that Paradise from 
which, by the terms of the same creed, his victim was 
forever excluded;) — when Abraham Lincoln was shot,. 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



83 



he lay for a time in utter unconsciousness, — he died and 
made no sign ! He received his death wound in a the- 
atre, the very place of all others which Mr. Talmage 
holds in abomination, and attendance upon which he de- 
clares to be a sign of unregeneracy. He was well known 
to be an unbeliever in the common theology, he fulfilled 
not a single condition of that preparation for death which 
Mr. Talmage declares absolutely essential to salvation. 
Insist upon this Brooklyn preacher's doctrine being ap- 
plied in this case with the same strictness with which he 
applies it in other cases, and Abraham Lincoln went to 
hell, is there now, and will be there forever! Yet, on 
the Sunday following that fateful Friday, did Mr. Tal- 
mage ascend his pulpit, shrouded, as were all our pulpits, 
with the black tokens of a nation' s woe— and, in the face 
of grief as true and fervent as ever followed the exit of 
mortal man from this stage of being, did he talk of end- 
less damnation and announce the doctrines that he now 
so bravely flaunts in the light of day ? Here was an op- 
portunit\", such as occurs but once in a man's lifetime ! 
Here was an illustrious example of downfall, an awfully 
solemn and impressive warning ! Did Mr. Talmage use 
it ? No, and for his life he dared not ! Stern, strong 
men were bowed in grief, stirred to their innermost 
depths with that sorrow that rejects all shams and sees re- 
alitv ! Nobler emotions and diviner intuitions were in 
the ascendant then, and Mr. Tannage's futile dogma 
would have been swept away like chaff before a hurri- 
cane of righteous scorn ! And so, here again, as it has 
in thousands of less conspicuous instances, as it always 
has and always will when brought under any test of re- 
ality, the old dogma broke down. 



84 



The JB ad-Morals Argument. 



Moreover — and let tins be closely observed — if Mr. 
Tannage's doctrine is true — if the eternal, unchange- 
able destiny of every human soul is fixed before that soul 
leaves this mortal body, and if that destiny is dependent 
wholly upon the official acceptance of Christ in this state 
— if this razor-edged dogma stands at the gate of death, 
dividing the great stream of humanity that rolls toward 
eternity into two branches forever — if this is a true ac- 
count of the method and purpose of the Divine Govern- 
ment, then it follows that already nine-tenths of all God's 
creatures are settled in interminable torments, here at 
the very threshold of eternity, and that this overwhelm- 
ing ruin represents the best He can or will do for them ; 
it follows that hell is peopled with some of the best, and 
heaven with some of the worst of God's children. Ap- 
ply Mr. Talmage's tests of salvation, and if Nero and 
Robespierre are in hell, so also are Abraham Lincoln 
and Charles Sumner, and if Howard and Wilberforce are 
in heaven, so also are Cesar Borgia and Lord Rochester, 
Anton Probst, Martha Grinder, the Pittsburg poisoner, and 
a host of others to whom murder and the gallows have 
proved the gateway to Paradise ! In Mr. Talmage's sys 
tem morality has no necessary connection with sal- 
vation, nor immorality with damnation. Righteousness 
is "filthy rags," "official faith" dissevers the rela- 
tion of well-doing and well-being, overturns the moral 
order of the universe, and blinds and reverses even the 
discriminating justice of Almighty God ! Arnold, of 
Rugby, said that the u evangelical system, as conceived 
by the masses, was undoubtedly false." But this Brook- 
lyn preacher imposes on the masses a false conception, 
even of the evangelical system, which in his hands be- 



The Bad-Morals Argument. 



85 



comes a complicated contrivance for enabling men to 
sin and escape the punishment of sin! He multiplies 
the terrors of hell, but quadruples the easy means of 
escape from it. 

And when you seriously consider who and what the 
saved are, and who and what the lost are, on Mr.Talrnage's 
theory, as he applies it, heaven and hell exchange func- 
tions and aspects — the one loses all attraction, theother 
all terror ; — the companionship of such lost souls seems 
more desirable than that of such saints, and all moral 
distinctions between reward and punishment are canceled , 

Fortunately, however, the intrinsic worth and good- 
ness of many souls resist the corrosion of such dogmas, 
and the Christian life and graces bloom in every com- 
munion, not through an intellectual apprehension of such 
absurd theories of the Divine Government, but by con- 
tact with the living spirit of Christ. 

It is no part of my purpose or spirit to retort upon 
Mr. Talmage the weak and unworthy charges that he 
has made. Happily, he does in no true sense represent 
the Christian denomination whose name he bears. There 
are hundreds of able and faithful ministers, and thousands 
of sweet and noble souls in that church, whose contempt 
for such utterances would fully equal mine. 

IV. — Soul Saving. 
Mr. Talmage further charges that Universalism is 
" deadening to all effort" at soul-saving." He asks, " What 
is the matter with a great many of our Protestant 
churces to-day \ Why, they have got this disease 
of Universalism in a milder form." This saying explains 
Mr. Tannage's sermon, and exposes the secret of his in- 



86 



Sotd-Saving. 



temperate and unprovoked attack. 66 What is the rea- 
son," he asks, 66 that we don't have more conversions in 
our churches ? " and his answer intimates that " the dis- 
ease of Universalism " has attacked the pulpit as well as 
the pews. He warns his ministerial brethren thus: 
u Swinnett said a thing that made me quake, body and 
mind and soul, when I first heard it. He says, ' It is an 
awful thing to fall into hell from under the pulpit, but, ah ! 
what an awful thing to fall into hell out of the pulpit ! } " 
It seems to me that there is one thing worse even 
than that, Mr. Talmage, and that is to have hell rise into 
the pulpit. There is no doubt that the orthodox defec- 
tion from Mr. Talmage's favorite dogma is more exten- 
sive than even his alarmed vision perceives. But he 
should discriminate. The man who simply rejects the 
doctrine of endless punishment, falls, not into Universal- 
lisrn, but into Sentimentalism. You can not u fall*' out 
of orthodoxy into Universalism. You have got to rise ! 
Universalism is not a system of inert negations, it is a 
most weighty and solemn affirmation of God's resistless 
purpose to have every soul which He has made a righteous 
soul at last ! From this invincible necessity hell releases 
no man. God " will have all men to be saved." All 
the potencies of His moral government are framed for 
that, and will accomplish that. Man's alternative is not 
in the final result, but in the means. He can achieve his 
destiny by the royal way of Faith and Obedience, Christ 
being his Guide and Teacher, and the Holy Spirit his 
Inspirer, or, rejecting this, and falling into the iron 
mechanism of the retributive laws, he will be brought to 
repentance and obedience by pain, and " saved, so as by 
fire." It is the orthodox sentimentalist who launches 



Soul-Saving, 



87 



kimself on the vague hope that 66 things will finally come 
right," without special effort and purpose, through the 
u grandmotherly " goodness of God. The Universalist 
knows that u things " have got to be made right, that 
the use of the means is as imperative as the end is cer- 
tain, that man is as necessarily the active agent in the 
achievement of righteousness as he is in the achieve- 
ment of an education; that he must "work out his own 
salvation," because it is " God who worketh in him, both 
lo will and to do of His good pleasure." And the Uni- 
versalist further perceives that this unescapable and in- 
exorable necessity of righteousness which is laid upon 
him is not the issue of fate, wrath, or indifference, but is 
the determinate counsel of that perfect wisdom which 
perceives, and that perfect love which desires the abso- 
lute best for man. Thus the Divine intention and his own 
perception coincide. Right ceases to be relative to pain, 
and becomes absolute ; right because eternally right ; 
best because everlastingly best. And there can be no 
doctrine proclaimed to mankind that exerts so steady 
and persistent a pressure upon the conscience, or that 
brings so potent and noble an inspiration to the heart as 
that Universalism which the Tabernacle preacher de- 
scribes as u withering to all effort at soul-saving." 

Mr. Talmage's idea of u soul-saving " is thus defined 
by himself: " Oh, my soul, wake up! there is a hell, 
and it is our place to keep men out of % it." Precisely. 
And throughout his sermon he thus confounds salvation 
with safety, security against penalty with enfranchise- 
ment from sin. And the peril which he thinks the great 
peril of life, the one great danger with which he threatens 
men, is precisely the one danger to which no subject of 



88 



Soul-Saving. 



God's perfect government can ever be exposed — the 
danger, namely, of being left in endless rebellion in end- 
less pain. He offers man an alternative ; God offers no 
alternative. He offers a compromise ; God offers no 
compromise. "By Myself have I sworn. 79 He says, in 
effect, that man can take refuge in hell forever from the 
necessity of repentance and obedience ; and this is in fact 
the alternative which thousands of desperate, reckless, 
sin-enfeebled souls are to-day contemplating without 
being moved by it to a single effort at reformation. Some 
are thinking, " I will repent by and by some, u No hell 
can be worse than this )" some, "I shall not have to do 
anything there, that will end all." " Brethren," said a 
minister (of the strictest sect) who had become enslaved 
by drink, to those who came to remonstrate with him, 
u Brethren, it is in vain ! I understand this matter bet- 
ter than you do. I know that I am going to endless tor- 
ment, but I can not, and I will not stop ! " When a soul 
rises, even in ruin, to such a majesty of defiance, scorn- 
ing both obedience and terror, orthodoxy can say no 
more — your "two destinies" man is dumb, he can only 
urge his false alternative, and reiterate his futile threat* 
But Universalism comes, saying, " Your defiance is utter- 
ly vain, there is but one refuge for you in all the worlds 
of God, and that is obedience. If it requires the fire of 
ten hells to melt your stubbornness, or the pain of fifty 
hells to stimulate your besotted will, then that fire and 
pain will come, for you are in the hands of a God who 
will have His way, will have you clean, will have you 
right! " Doctor," said a man in Baltimore lately, a 
confirmed opium-eater, and dying of the habit, " Doctor, 
it is not perdition that I fear ; I would willingly face the 



Soul- Saving. 



89 



accumulated wrath of Almighty God, and take all the 
agonies of hell fused into one pang, rather than spend 
eternity without opium !" The sin-habit is the opium- 
habit of the soul, and no weak proffer of alternatives, no 
vain threats of hopeless pain, can cure it. Ah ! Mr. Tal- 
mage, when you approach a sinful soul, lost to all higher 
appeals, in whom what we call free-will has become 
bond-will, when, as you so often do, you have fruitlessly 
exhausted the terrors of " damnation/' drop your fable, 
and preach the resistless terror of restoration ! An im- 
mortal soul, rooted in utter despair, is strong, but God is 
stronger! Surround that soul with the awfulness of 
omnipotence ! Nor time, nor space, nor pain, shall offer 
refuge for sin. Let the absolute imperative speak, 
u You must be clean ! " " The Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth." Then add that this resistless mandate is not 
the issue of an uncontrolled and uncontrollable wrath, but 
is the relentless purpose of an Infinite love, and you 
have encircled that soul with the real u terror of the 
Lord." 

But Mr. Talmage seems unable to see that man is in 
any danger worth mentioning, unless he is in danger of 
endless hell, or that there is anything in particular to 
save men from, if not from an u eternal catastrophe. ?? 
He asks, " What did Paul mean when he feared becom- 
ing a castaway ? Cast away on what coast ? The coast 
of everlasting love ? It could not have been on the coast 
of everlasting love." Why not ? Mr. Talmage. Love has 
a more sure and relentless purpose than hatred ; love 
can inflict sharper pains than wrath ; love can devise 
and execute a more stringent and effective discipline 
than anger. Paul had been a castaway once, and had 



90 



Soul-Saving. 



found it hard to " kick against the pricks." The good- 
ness of God had led him to repentance, but he still had a 
"thorn in the flesh/' an unsubdued Adam, and he 
prayed to be delivered " from the body of this death." 
But he had learned to "glory in tribulations/' because 
tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, 
and experience hope." He knew he might be a casta- 
way again if he did not keep his body under and bring 
it into subjection ; but he also knew that he could not 
become a castaway forever, for he said: "I am per- 
suaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin- 
cipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to 
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord." 

Paul knew he was safe from eternal torments, yet he 
knew he was not saved, for he said : " Not as though I 
had already attained, either were already perfect. * * 
I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one 
thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and 
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I 
press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling 
of God in Christ Jesus." Paul felt that he had enough 
to do to stimulate all his faculties to their highest exer- 
cise, yet the fear of endless hell was utterly absent from 
him. He saw the real danger that beset himself and atf 
mankind, the danger of continuing in sin, of the absence 
of goodness, the inherent foulness of vice, the pain and 
loss of disobedience, the degradation and shame of 
sensualism, the absence of light and power, peace and 
joy that must ensue so long as sin held dominion ; all 
these perils Paul had a most quick and lively sense of; 



Soul-Saving. 



91 



and he also saw the rewards of righteousness, the fruit 
of the spirit, "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance;" and he 
besought his brethren, not by their fear of endless dam- 
nation, but u by the mercies of Grod," to present their 
u bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto Grod," 
which was their a reasonable service." He had an 
overmastering sense of the " goodness and severity " of 
God, of the strictness of the Divine retributions. "Be 
not deceived ; Grod is not mocked ; for whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap — yet he coupled this 
with no reference to an endless hell. In short, he found 
a sphere of the most faithful and beneficent activity, and 
the motives and sanctions of the strictest virtue and the 
most exalted spiritual endeavor, in a circle from which 
was excluded all reference to an " eternal catastro- 
phe. " 

Yet the same lack in the Universalist system leads 
Mr. Talmage to characterize it as u withering to all 
effort at soul-saving." From which I infer that he be- 
lieves that if there were no endless hell before his eyes, 
he too would become dead to all effort at u soul-saving." 
In other words, if there is no endless hell to save men 
from, then there is nothing under the worn-out heavens 
for Mr. Talmage to do ! His occupation is gone. He 
will go and sit on the hillside with Jonah, over against 
Nineveh, watching to see the destruction he has prophe- 
sied, and when it comes not, he will say, u It is better 
for me to die than to live ! v 

The Lord Jesus was content to " save his people from 
their sins ; " he said : " I am come that they might have 
life, and have it more abundantly. " He announced his 



92 



Soul^Saving. 



mission thus: " The spirit of the Lord is upon rne, be- 
cause He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the 
poor : He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to 
preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of 
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.' 7 He said: 
" Grod sent not His Son into the world to condemn the 
world, but that the world through Him might be saved. " 
He said : " The Son of man is come to seek and to save 
that which was lost.*' But all this to Mr. Talmage 
would be " withering to all effort at soul-saving." Xoth- 
ing can excite his ambition unless he be allowed to usurp 
the prerogative and function of omnipotence, and deal 
with and control the final, eternal destiny of men ! 
Wholly unsatisfied to exercise in his sphere the legiti- 
mate influence of one quite, fallible human being upon 
another, entirely unstimulated by the honor which Paul 
deemed his highest glory, of being a " worker together 
with God," an u ambassador for Christ," Mr. Talmage, 
of Brooklyn, stalks as a dictator into the council-cham- 
ber of Him, before whom angels bow and archangels veil 
their faces, and says, in effect : "I can not be stimulated 
to any effort for the welfare of my fellow-creatures un- 
less you will commit to my hands their final, eternal des- 
tiny!" With what would be a huge presumption, an 
infinite impertinence, were it not for the ludicrous con- 
trast between the exility of the proffered means, and the 
immensity of the proposed end, Mr. Talmage announces 
his u business" to be that of a " soul-saver." And 
within what narrow, official, mechanical conception does 
he confine the magnificent process of that development, 
discipline, and education of immortal souls which is the 



Soul-Saving. 



93 



real meaning of u salvation ! ? ' The Brooklyn preacher 
seems to conceive this life as a vast arena, into which 
a relentless Grod is perpetually thrusting millions of im- 
mortal souls, crude, raw, hampered, weak, ignorant, 
passionate, disabled by hereditary taint, and by baffling 
conditions, prone to all evil, born under an infinite 
curse, saying, as He does so : u You are to endure for- 
ever, but this life is your only and final probation. You 
will here fix your eternal condition of happiness or tor- 
ment. ?? And so He pours them continually into a world 
where the devil has been settled for six thousand, and 
the Christ but two thousand years ; so He pours them 
in, the blind, halt, lame, maimed, possessed, impotent ; 
some of them into regions where Christ has been heard 
of, but more into regions as utterly sequestered from his 
influence as though they were on another planet ; some 
of them knowing, but the vast majority utterly ignorant, 
even of the conditions imposed upon them ; the proba- 
tion of some lasting for years, that of others for hours 
only, and then the myriad host is gathered before the 
judgment-seat and consigned, the many to infinite tor- 
ment, the few to enduring felicity ! This, I say, seems 
to be Mr. Tannage's conception of the character of God, 
the methods of His government, the processes of His 
salvation and the results of his work ! Among the saved 
we shall find the happy few whose fortunate lot it was to 
live in Brooklyn and be cast within the range of the 
Tabernacle preacher's potent influence ; among the eter- 
nally lost we shall find all those who believed better 
things of their Creator, who worshiped Him as the all- 
wise, all-just, and all-good, who believed their. Bibles, 
trusted and loved their Saviour, prayed for the Holy 



94 



Soul-Saving. 



Spirit to lead tkein into all truth, and strove thus to enter 
into the " eternal life" of righteousness ! 

For nothing less than this can Mr. Talmage intend 
when he brings his final charge against Universalism, 
that it is "the means of eternal catastrophe to a 
great many;" and again, he says : "If we let it (Univer- 
salism) alone, it will ruin half the race." "If we let it 
alone/' Who are the we J ? Why, Mr. Talmage and his 
brethren ! Ah ! then, upon Mr. Talmage and Bis breth- 
ren hangs the eternal destiny of half the race ! Hear 
this and tremble, you who have believed that your eter- 
nal destiny was in the hands of God and Christ ! Christ 
is no longer your Saviour! Mr. Talmage has left Him 
dead upon the field ; as witness the following extraordi- 
nary and most blasphemous figure : " Will yon hurl 
Him (Christ) on his back, trample on Him, putting one 
foot on His holy brow, and the other on His mangled 
heart, and from the corpse of a murdered Christ, will 
you leap into hell ?" 

Mr. Talmage has spoken of the "demoralizing" influ- 
ence of Universalism; but you may behold in this utter- 
ance the brutalizing influence of his dogma upon himself. 
A figure of rhetoric is indeed not to be tried by the rules 
of logic ; but an impassioned utterance such as this is 
strictly logical in its revelation of the state of the mind 
and imagination of the speaker ; and I venture to say 
that so wholly sensual and utterly revolting a conception 
can scarcely be paralleled, even among those products 
of a besotted imagination — the miracle and passion-plays 
of the dark ages. What conceptions of the Divine na- 
ture and spiritual functions of the Lord Jesus can spring 
from the rank soil of so debased and sensualized an im- 



Soul-Saving. 



95 



agination ? What true picture of God can be formed 
on so diseased and inflamed a retina? or what rays of 
the light of eternal justice and goodness can be truly 
transmitted through so turbid and discolored a medium ? 

Mr. Tannage's entire sermon bears witnessto the cap- 
ital defect here illustrated. It is a coarse, vulgar, irra- 
tional and unwarrantable attack, not upon the doctrines 
of Universalism alone, but upon the moral character of 
its teachers and professors, a weak and false aspersion of 
the good name and fair fame of a Christian church and 
people. As I have shown you, it begins with perversion 
and misrepresentation, continues in fallacy and curious 
and almost comical logical obliquity, and ends as such a 
beginning prophecies and necessitates. In taking my 
leave of it, I am heartily glad to avow my conviction 
that it is representative of nothing, save its author. And 
my only apology for the prominence I have given it, is 
that it furnished a dark back-ground on which to sketch, 
in vivid contrast, the outlines of a rational and Christian 
faith. 

V. — Two Destinies. 

In closing this discourse, I revert to the final charge, 
that Universalism is the u means of eternal catastrophe 
to a great many ; " not for the charge's sake (for if 
God's character is such that He will damn half His crea- 
tures 'for believing the best of Him, there can be no 
possible guarantee that He will not damn the other half 
for believing the worst of Him), but for the sake of 
exposing the gospel-varnished Paganism which lurks 
under this and all similar vaticinations of " eternal 
catastrophe/' and which vitiates and enfeebles the whole 



96 



Twc Desti nies. 



body of so-called Christian theology. For the only 
"catastrophe 53 which can occur in a God-governed uni- 
verse, is the "'•catastrophe** of the final, complete ac- 
complishment of that God's will, And whoever contem- 
plates "two destinies" for the subjects of that govern- 
ment, the one of fixed, immitigable, unalterable Evil, 
and the other of final Good, contemplates nothing less 
than the eternal dominion in this universe of two oppo- 
site and antagonistic powers, who can be only in a me- 
chanical and official sense domiciled in one person. 

Either the distinction which we maintain between 
Good and Evil is fallacious, or the eternal perpetuation 
of Evil involves an eternal antagonism between two rival 
and contending Potencies, neither of whom can ever ex- 
clude the other, and neither of whom by consequence 
can ever be God or supreme. And this is dualism, pure 
and simple. And on any two destinies" view of the 
Divine government, monotheism is impossible. If there 
be an absolutely Supreme Being. He will have His way. 
and it avails nothing to allege that His will is perfectly 
fulfilled in the endless damnation of a portion of His 
creatures. That is simply to discharge the essential 
nature of evil, by saying that, being the will of God. 
endless damnation is on the whole good. But either 
endless damnation is an evil, or it is not. If it is 
not. it is not to be dreaded, and is not a catastrophe." ' 
If it is. and is executed and perpetuated by the 
will of God, then evil is seated in the very bosom 
of God, and is an essential part of the Divine na- 
ture ; the eternal conflict goes on there, and you have 
simply chased the problem to the confines of the Divine 
nature, there to leave it. Reason backward from any 



Two Destinies. 



97 



theory of human destiny that contemplates the endless 
perpetuation of evil, and you reach the same dilemma, 
from which the only escape is in dualism. To allege 
"free-will" as perpetuating evil eternally, is only to 
change the form of the dilemma. A will free to perpet- 
uate evil eternally, is an independent, potent, and suc- 
cessful antagonist to God, and gives the necessary dual- 
istic adversary. A will freely perpetuating evil, and yet 
doing it in accordance with the will of God, is making 
God's will the sanction of evil, and that throws the con- 
flict back again into the Divine nature. In brief, the 
existence of eternal evil negatives the existence of a Su- 
preme Being, unless Evil is that Supreme Being. 

Therefore, a belief in eternal punishment is inconsist- 
ent with belief in a Supreme Being. And, in fact, the 
mediaeval creeds of Christendom are not monotheistic. 
The theory of a triune God is, in this respect, a futile, 
mechanical device for hiding the problem of evil in a 
maze of interchangeable persons and relations. But 
even that device did not answer the demands of the 
problem, without a fourth person, a Devil. And an 
eternalized Devil is a necessity to the doctrine of eter- 
nal torments, and is practically believed in by those 
who hold that doctrine. But this furnishes the eternal 
antagonist, and brings us around again to dualism. It 
avails not to limit his power, if you do not change 
his nature. He is the eternal antagonist to God still, 
successful and defiant, and God is not Supreme. 

I say again, that this pagan fallacy lurks in every 
creed that teaches eternal punishment, and that only on 
the theory of Universalism can a rational belief in one 
Supreme Being be maintained. If the Devil is Su- 
7 



98 



Two Destinies. 



preine, universal damnation will be the result of his 
rule ; he will perpetuate evil. If God is Supreme, uni- 
versal salvation will be the result of His government : 
He will extinguish evil. But if both eternal Good and 
eternal Evil is to be the result of such government as 
there is. then there is no Supreme. Being, but two an- 
tagonistic rulers, uncOnquering but unconquerable, main- 
taining an eternal warfare. Only on such a theory can 
Mr. Tannage's idea of an u eternal catastrophe" be 
maintained. 

And this idea of "two destinies" and " eternal ca- 
tastrophe, " this pagan defect in the Christian idea of 
the Supreme God is what vitiates and enfeebles the 
moral power of the creeds that harbor it. They offer 
man "two destinies," and millions of sin-hardened or 
sin-enfeebled souls accept the worse destiny, without a 
tremor of conscience, and go on their sinful way. They 
offer a final alternative to obedience — God offers none ! 
They offer a delusive compromise by means of official 
faith and substituted righteousness, and millions of souls 
accept that compromise with a spasm of evanescent 
gratitude, which supplies the only moral force this 
theory has ; and divide into two classes, the one led for- 
ward into actual obedience by awakened love, the other 
benumbing conscience by the practice of official obedi- 
ence and perfunctory rites through life, and awakening 
in the next life to find that their rank, power and happi- 
ness are determined there, not by their official belief, 
but by their character. 

To this " catastrophe " — not an " eternal " one, but 
one of the greatest that can befall a blinded and deluded 
soul, is Mr. Talmage contributing in this sermon. "If 



Two Destinies, 



99 



1 have tormented you with a flaming sword, it was only 
to show you the Kefuge." Precisely. He has alleged 
the impossibility of righteousess, and magnified the 
terrors of hell, to scare them into the acceptance of an 
official salvation. He offers a compromise where Grod 
offers no compromise. And much of this pitiful and 
disastrous disjunction of morality from religion, so visi- 
ble and so ruinous in our official, business, and social 
life, is the result of this delusive compromise, relaxing 
the consciences of thousands who deem themselves relig- 
ious and u saved " men. And operating through all this 
doctrine, and the secret of its defective moral power, is 
this christianized paganism of "two powers," "two 
destinies," a compromise offered, a final alternative 
possible. 

Universalism comes, concentrating all the potency of 
omnipotence upon the consciences of men. To the sin- 
ner : u Utterly vain and hopeless is your rebellion. De- 
part from evil, or it will be torn from you in pain and 
sore distress. No compromise, no final alternative is 
possible ; you struggle against omnipotence ; you must 
be clean. Your one destiny is Eighteousness. Through 
corrective penalty and dire anguish, if you choose that 
way, deepening and intensifying till endurance is ex- 
hausted and the stubborn will subdued, you must accom- 
plish that destiny. Turn now, arid turning, find that the 
same force that resisted your disobedience, nowhelps your 
obedience, for it is inexorable and relentless love through 
all. The stream that ran against you, runs with you. 
Christ is your helper, and your final victory is certain." 

Universalism is a lens which brings to a focus in the con- 
science of man, all rays that emanate from a Perfect Su- 



100 



Ttvo Destinies. 



preme Being. And the sin-hardened or sin-enfeebled soul 
which can, and often does, stolidly resist that last re- 
source of orthodoxy, the threat of endless damnation, 
can be utterly overwhelmed and brought to its knees in 
repentance by that constraining u terror of the Lord/ 7 
the unescapable, inexorable, absolute, eternal necessity 
of restoration. No human conscience can throw off that 
pressure. It is the grasp of Omnipotence ! " The Lord 
will not cast off forever." 16 God will have all men to be 
saved." Righteousness is eternal life. Perfect con- 
formity to a perfect moral order is the one issue to the 
Divine Government — the one, sole destiny of man. 

66 1 beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of 
God , that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptable wito God, ivhich is your reasonable service. 
And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed 
by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is 
that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God" 



PULLMAN'S REPLY TO TALMAGE. 



A REVIEW OF A SERMON BY THE REV. T. DE WITT 
TALMAGE, ENTITLED " THE BIBLE 
VS. UNIVERSALIS!," 



BY 



REV. JAMES M. PULLMAN, 



PASTOR OF THE 



CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR 

(SIXTH UNIVERSALIS! SOCIETY) 
NEW YOEK CITY. 



REPORTED BY EDW. B. DICKINSON. 



C^NEW YORK : 
1875. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




ill 

0 021 897 900 2 




